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Copy 1 W AND ENLARGED MANUAL 

. (THIRD EDITIO]N^) 

PRACTICAL 

$tra\vberry and General Berry 
?ruit Culture 

ALSO OF 

Grapes, Asparagus, Rhubarb, Etc. 




By O. W. BLACKNALL, 

Vice-President North Carolina Horticultural Society, 

Editor of The Strawberry Specialist, and President and General 

Manager of the Continental Plant Company, 

KITTBELL, N. C. 

COPYRIGHTED 1902 B .' CONTINENTAL PLANT CO. 



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wberry Specialist 



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NEW AND ENLARGED MA]S[UAL 

(THIRD EDITIO:?^) 

PRACTICAL 

Strawberry and General Berry 
fruit Culture 

AliSO OF -v 

Grapes, Asparagus, Rhubarb, Etc.: 




By O. W. BLACKNALL, 

Vice-President North Carolina Horticultural Society, 

Editor of The Strawberry Specialist, and President and General 

Manager of the Continental Plant Company, 

KITTKELL, I*r. C. 



INDEX. 

PAGE. 

The Strawberry's Place in Nature 4 

Different Species of the Strawberry 5 

The Name and History of the Strawberry 8 

Sex of the Strawberry 11 

Propagating Strawberry Plants 16 

The Strawberry as an Article of Diet 19 

The Best Soil for the Strawberry, — Its Wonderful Adaptive- 

ness to all Soils and Climates 22 

Manuring Strawberries 26 

Terracing, an Important Part of Strawberry Culture 31 

New Varieties 37 

When to Set Strawberry Plants 39 

Field Culture of the Strawberry 43 

Garden Culture of the Strawberry 53 

Growing Strawberries in a Barrel 62 

Mulching, Winter Protection, Protecting Blooms from 

Frost, etc 65 

Forcing Strawberries 69 

Renewing Old Beds 71 

Breeding Up Strawberry Varieties by Selection 73 

Picking and Shipping Strawberries 75 

Selling Strawberries — Finding and Creating a Market 81 

Profits of Strawberry Culture 84 

Irrigation 87 

Strawberry Pests and their Remedies 90 

Seryipg, Pjreseirvkig,;Q<joking, Canning, etc 95 

•Go4sel)erry Cultijrfe*: . . s 98 

*Dew*beirry X:ulture 99 

Raspberry Culture 101 

Grape Culture .;. , 102 

Asparagus . .'. 105 

Rhubarb or Pie Plant 108 

Currant Culture 109 

Horse Radish 110 

Spraying for Fungous Diseases 110 

The Cowpea is a Forerunner of the Strawberry and General 

Soil Improver 113 

Things that Should be Borne in Mind by Berry Growers. . . 116 



^■s.> 



'i?"^ 



FOREWORD 



It has been said that, as a rule, farm and fruit 
writers write not out of the fulness of their expe- 
rience but of their inexperience. While not admit- 
ting the truth of this charge against any consider- 
able number of his co-writers, the author of this 
treatise can, without hestitation, deny it in his own 
case. 

He planted his first strawberries a little less than 
twenty-nine years ago. For nearly nineteen years 
he has devoted his time exclusively to the scientific 
and practical study of this fruit, as a grower on an 
ever-increasing scale. For nearly as long he, while 
writing much on the subject, has been an attentive 
reader of what others had to say touching his 
calling. 

But the information embodied herein, be it wise 
or unwise, was learned, or proven, in the school of 
experience — stern, strict school,whose tuition comes 
high, but which teaches deep and true. 

He has succeeded; and such prestige as success — 
success against many odds — deserves he is entitled 
to. In the pages that follow he strives to give the 
essential and useful parts of this experience, hoping 
to make the rough and steep pathway to success 
smoother for others than he found it himself ; for 
he traveled it largely unguided, and the guides he 
occasionally had either did not know the way them- 
selves or could not tell it understand ingly. 

O. W. Blacknali.. 

Kittrell, N. C, October 8, 1902. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE STRAWBERRY'S PLACE IN NATURE. 

While a few of the following pages have no 
direct bearing on practical strawberry culture, they 
give information touching the strawberry that will 
doubtless be of interest to growers not already in 
possession of it. 

The strawberry is a member of the great rose 
family — the practical, business member of the fam- 
ily it would be called by those who put the useful 
before the beautiful. 

To the great natural order (or race, properly 
speaking), Rosacese, of which the rose is the type, 
belong the strawberry, along with its remote kin- 
dred, the plum, cherry, apple, pear, quince, service 
berry, hawthorn, blackberry, raspberry, etc., and 
meadow-sweet. The resemblance of the blossoms 
of all these to that of the wild rose and the rose- 
apple to the fruit of the apple, pear, quince, etc., 
must have struck observant people. They are all 
descended from a common, though extremely remote 
ancestor. 

What is called the fruit of the strawberry (the 
real fruit is the seed, of which the pulp is but the 
receptacle) bears an odd analogy to the '' hip," or 
rose-apple. It is simply a rose-apple, which, in the 
long, slow process of difiFerentiation nature for some 
purpose — and she does nothing without purpose — 
turned wrong side out, placing the seed on the out- 
side of the pulp instead of inside, as is the case 
with all other fruit of this order, except the black- 
berrp, dewberry and raspberry — close kindred of 
the strawberry. 



5 

CHAPTER II. 



DIFFERENT SPECIES OF THE STRAWBERRY. 

After much disputation and no little confusion, 
botanists have agreed in dividing the strawberry 
family into seven more or less distinct species. 

FRAGARIA YESCA.— This, the common,wild straw- 
berry of England, is found in the cooler and more 
mountainous parts of Europe, North America, 
and probably under similar conditions in Asia and 
elsewhere. This variety has the distinction of not 
only having been the first species brought into cul- 
tivation, but also of being almost surely the oldest 
member of the strawberry family. 

This is proven partly by its being more widely 
dispersed over the face of the earth than any other 
species, but mainly by the fact that its habits of 
growth and propagation are nearest to what the 
strawberry plant must originally have been. 

Thus the universal fondness of the strawberry 
plant for coolness and moisture, and its intolerance 
of heat and drought, prove that the family Fr anuria 
must have originated in a climate merging from 
temperate into cold. It is in regions with just that 
climate that we find vesca. 

Again, the strawberry must originally have prop- 
agated almost, if not quite entirely, by seeds, just 
as most of the congeners of the great natural order 
RosacecB still do. Now vesca is vastly more de- 
pendent on the seed for perpetuation than any 
other species. In fact, there are varieties of this 
species, like the Monthly Alpine, which produce 
practically no runners at all, but are dependent on 
seed propagation or division of the original plant, 
the latter being evidently only one of nature's 
makeshifts; for plant subdivision could have been 



of little or no aid in disseminating the species 
over the world, or even in enabling it to move to a 
near-by or more favorable habitat when the pres- 
ent one becomes unfavorable. It could only have 
kept it alive in one place till it was overwhelmed 
or crowded out by vegetation of more rampant 
growth. 

But the strongest proof of all of vesca^s ancientness 
and nearness to the original type is the fact that of 
all species it varies less in propagation by seed. In 
fact there are varieties of this species, like the Al- 
pine, which are more successfully propagated from 
seed than in any other way. Thus the Alpines and 
their kindred may be honored, if for nothing else, 
as the most ancient and aristocratic member of the 
Fragaria family. Like aristocrats generally, they 
are exceedingly averse to blood intermixture out- 
side of their own caste. I believe that the Alpines 
utterly refuse to hybridize with other species. At 
any rate hybridization is more difficult, and I be- 
lieve that none have ever been made. 

FRAGARIA CALIFORNICA.— This is a small-fruited 
species found only in California and Northern Mex- 
ico, and very nearly allied to the former species, 
F, vesca. If any varieties of this species are in 
cultivation, it is a very recent thing. 

FRAGARIA INDICA.— This is a yellow flowered 
species found wild in Upper India. The berries 
are small, red and insipid, and the specie is grown 
generally as a curiosity. 

FRAGARIA ELATOIR.— This species is indigenous 
to Europe and is found most plentifully in Ger- 
many. It is called Hautbois (oboe), meaning 
Highwood. Possibly it is so named for the reason 
that it grows in woods, when nearly all other mem- 
bers of the family do not. But the name most 
probably comes from the habit of bearing its fruit 



on long stems elevated above the foliage. The ber- 
ries are brownish, pale red, and sometimes greenish 
when full ripe. The flavor is musky and disagree- 
able to most. It has never been cultivated to any 
great extent. Of all the Frag aria family it is 
most inclined to be dioecious, to separate the sexes 
on different plants. This is probably an indication 
of plebianism or of a short ancestral line, widely 
differentiated from the ancient type, which produced 
male and female organs in the same blossom. In 
calling diceciousness a mark of plebianism, it must 
be remembered that I am speaking from the stand- 
point of scientific interest, not that of utility. For 
the tendency to dioecism has been rapidly devel- 
oped in two species by the high culture and cod- 
dling lately bestowed on the strawberry for com- 
mercial purposes. 

FRAGARIA CHILIENSIS.— This species is found on 
the west coast of America from Alaska to Chili. 
As many of its varieties bear very large blossoms, 
they were formerly classed as a species, and called 
Grandiflora, The most famous varieties cultivated 
in Europe belong to this species, or were obtained 
by crossing it on varieties of other species, notably 
by crossing on varieties of F, Virgimana, ChtU 
iensis as a variety is noted for its large size and 
mild flavor. It seems to succeed better in Europe 
than any of the other American species. 

FRAGARIA VIRGINIANA.— This is the common 
wild strawberry of the United States east of the 
Rocky Mountains. From this source comes the 
sprightliness of flavor and beauty of coloring that 
have captured the eye of the world and its stomach. 
This species has received more attention for prop- 
agation than probably all others combined. Va- 
rieties innumerable have been produced by crossing 



its varieties upon each other aud upon varieties of 
Chiliensis, 

The Wilson is the most typical variety of F. 
Virginiana, Charles Downing and closely allied 
varieties, Mr. Fuller classifies under a sub-species, 
Ili^inoensis, which is probably too close to F. Vir- 
giniana to be even partially severed from it. It 
seems to be simply F. Virginiana^ which has de- 
veloped a coarser habit of plant growth under wes- 
tern conditions of soil and climate, just as has been 
the case with tobacco. It is naturally larger than 
the typical F, Virgimana and of lighter color. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE NAME AND HISTORY OF THE STRAWBERRY. 

From the Latin name of the strawberry, Fraga, 
have come the Spanish Freza^ and the Italian 
Planta di Fragola, The Germans call it Erdheer- 
p flange, Dutch Aadbezie. The Spaniards of South 
America give it the musical and appropriate name 
Frutila^ Little Fruit, though the name would 
hardly fit some of our huge new varieties, three 
inches or more in diameter. The French name is 
Frazier^ from a Frenchman who introduced the 
Chilean variety in France. 

The origin of the English name of this berry is 
more uncertain than that of almost any other fruit. 
Some philologists derive its name from the habit of 
its runners to stray or wander about — strae^ the old 
Saxon form of stray, being sometimes corrupted 
into straw. Some trace the name to the practice 
of children to string the soft, easily penetrated 
fruit on straws. Others think that the straw used 
to keep the berries clean gave the strawberry its 



name. The resemblance of the thick and inter- 
laced runners, especially in a dead, dry state, to 
straw, has to others suggested the origin of the 
term. 

I think it very likely that the name came from 
none of these sources. It is almost certain that the 
name did not come from the straw used to mulch 
the fruit ; for a wild fruit as conspicuous and pop- 
ular as the delicious wild strawberry of England 
would hardly have been nameless till the fifteenth 
century, when it seems to have been first trans- 
planted into English gardens, while the use of straw 
or of any mulch was almost sure to have been later 
still. 

While it is possible that the name may have come 
from the above-mentioned practice of children, 
and probable that it came from the resemblance in 
spring, when the ripe berry attracted attention of 
the dead runners to straw, there are stronger rea- 
sons for a different origin of the word. 

It is not probable that our rustic forefathers (and 
it is likely that the name strawberry was brought 
with them from the continent, where the berry 
abounded, and is much older than their presence in 
Britain), were observant enough of the habits of 
the wild strawberry plant to derive a name from 
its habits of strawing, or as we would term it, stray- 
ing. Especially when there was an appellation 
so much more obvious and, to them more easily 
distinctive. 

Primitive man, like the child, is apt to give names 
expressive of some characteristic prominent at the 
first glance. Nice distinctions are beyond him. 
Now, as a child, it never occurred to me that a 
strawberry — and this region has always been famous 
for the excellence of its wild strawberries— could 
have its name for other reason than that I found it 



10 

growing wild amid the straw of the old fields. 
This seems to be its habitat in all countries, partly 
because the straw presents a grateful winter pro- 
tection for the strawberry plant, but mainly because 
in open unshaded spots both straw and the straw- 
berries find the most genial conditions and flourish 
there the best. 

I will add that the word straw, meaning the 
stalks of certain grains, and also, it seems, very 
early applied to certain wild grass when in a dry 
state they resemble the stalk of grain, is so old a 
term that it is found not only in the earliest Anglo- 
Saxon, but also in the languages derived from the 
same ancient stem. 

Although there is no record of the strawberry 
having been cultivated till the fifteenth century, it 
is hardly probable that no Roman gardener, eager 
to please the eye and palate of his luxurious master, 
no monk, skilled in the garden-craft of the middle 
ages, as the denizens of the monasteries were — it is 
hardly probable that some of these, alert and indus- 
trious as they were, failed to reduce the wild straw- 
berry to cultivation and improve the size and qual- 
ity, as they did most other things within their 
reach. 

But it is pretty certain that the strawberry was 
not cultivated to any considerable extent till a short 
while before the discovery of America. For a long 
while then, and even down to the close of the last 
century, there seems to have been only a very few 
difEerent varieties in cultivation. Yet if there had 
by chance been many more, they could hardly have 
been distinguished ; for a writer of Queen Eliza- 
beth's time speaks of three varieties in cultivation, 
and distinguished them by their color, white, red 
and green fruited. 

We have the satisfaction of knowing that it was 



11 

the introduction of the American varieties, descend- 
ants of Fragaria Virginiana^ our common wild 
strawberries, that gave the great impetus to straw - 
berry culture in England and thence to Europe. 
But up to 1834 the crossing and improvement was 
done in England, and the new varities sent back 
to us. In that year the introduction of the Hovey, 
a variety of American origin, led gradually but 
slowly to the propagation and planting of Ameri- 
can varieties almost exclusively, as is now the case. 
In strawberry growing, as in many other things, 
we have, so far as quantity is concerned, far out- 
stripped the old world. While I have no exact 
statistics, the yearly acreage and production of 
strawberries in the United States is enormous in 
its proportions. The total strawberry product 
offered on the markets of the United States has 
recently been estimated at $100,000,000 annually. 
Prodigious sums have been made to the acre on 
this fruit. While slovenliness boosted by luck will 
have less showing than in the days when the acre- 
age was smaller and the modes of culture cruder, 
the demand for good berries is steadily increasing. 
Diligence and intelligence will not fail of its 
reward. 



CHAPTER IV. 



SEX OF THE STRAWBERRY. 

All plant life, and indeed all animal life as well, 
was originally monoecious, that is, they had both 
sexes united in the same individual. Animal life, 
except in its very lowest forms, is now at an im- 
mense remove from this state of monoecism. For 
dioecism, the separation of the sexes in two differ- 
ent individuals, is the chief mark of development, 



12 

or the rising from a lower to a higher form of life. 

Dioecism in plant life must be, comparatively 
speaking, a very recent thing. Reasoning from 
analogy it seems to be an unmistakable mark of 
development in the families and species of plants, 
notably the strawberry, in which it has appeared ; 
not necessarily an improvement in the fruit, often 
quite the contrary, as is the case with the Haut- 
bois, but a development of modes of life and prop- 
agation, which nature found to be most effective 
to perpetuate the species. 

This separation of the sexual organs in the blos- 
som of different plants has appeared in a very 
marked degree in two species of strawberries — 
Fragaria Vtrgmiana^ our common wild straw- 
berry, and Fragaria elatoir^ the Hautbois or High- 
wood strawberry of Europe. Among the latter 
dioecism is common even in its wild state. Our 
wild strawberry seems not to have developed this 
quality to much extent till cultivated and caused 
to lead a highly artificial mode of life. 

As none of the varieties in general cultivation 
are descended from the Hautbois, the tendency to 
dioecism now so common must come from F, 
Virginiana^ our common wild strawberry. This 
species crosses readily on the Chilean species, but 
obstinately refuses to cross on all, or nearly all 
varieties of the other species. 

Dioecism in the strawberry as in all fruits mani- 
fests itself in the blossom — the blossom of one va- 
riety being female, or, as they are usually termed, 
pistillate or imperfect, while the blossom of another 
contain both male and female organs and are 
termed staminate, or perfect. 

Pistil means, pestle, and pistillate varieties are 
so named because each of the compact clusters of 
seed-bearing organs in the centre of the blossom 



13 

resembles a pestle when closely examined. Every 
one of the pestles or pistils bears at the base a rudi- 
mentary seed which develops into a real seed when 
its pistil is impregnated with pollen. This pollen, 
which is the male principle, is an impalpable dust, 
invisible to the naked eye. Each respective pistil 
must be impregnated by it. If not no seed form at 
the base of that pistil. And if no seed develops 
then no pulp or fruit, which is simply a receptacle 
for the seed forms. If all the pistils are poUenized 
or impregnated then every seed develops with its 
surrounding portion of pulp and the result is a 
perfect berry. If from lack of pollen or impreg- 
nating dust only a part of the seed develops, the 
result must perforce be a knotty, imperfect berry. 
For frugal nature wastes nothing. She never de- 
velops pulp or fruit except to nourish a seed. 

Staminate or perfect varieties are so called from 
the stamens (meaning threads) which are the or- 
gans that bear the pollen or impregnating dust. 
Many pistillate varieties are, in varying degree, 
staminate ; that is, they have more or less stamens 
and are able to partially poUenize their own pistils, 
especially in favorable seasons. Practically all 
staminates are double sexed, that is, the blossom 
contains both stamens and pistils, and are thus en- 
abled to impregnate themselves as well as pistillate 
blossoms growing near enough to be reached by 
their pollen, which nature sends abroad on every 
breeze as well as on bees and insects passing from 
flower to flower. 

There have been known staminate varieties which 
could not poUenize themselves, although their pol- 
len was perfectly potent on pistillate varieties 
growing near. But such varieties are exceptionally 
rare and need not be taken into account. There 
are also a few staminate varieties, like the old 



14 

Crystal City, in which the pistillate or female prin- 
ciple is so weak that not one bloom in ten makes 
a beiry. Their imperfect pistillization was plainly 
to be seen on examining the bloom. 

A short study of the following cuts will enable 
anyone to distinguish staminate and pistillate 
varieties. 





STAMINATE. PISTILI.ATE. 

When pistillate varieties are planted care must be 
taken to see that they are thoroughly pollenized. 
This can be insured by planting every fourth row 
of the field in a staminate variety whose blooms 
are rich in potent pollen. The staminate variety 
must also correspond in time of blooming with the 
pistillate variety it is intended to pollenize. Thus 
early blooming staminates should be planted with 
early blooming pistillates, medium with medium, 
late with late. 

It is now a generally conceded fact that the ber- 
ries of a pistillate variety are to a considerable ex- 
tent affected by the character of the staminate va- 
riety by which they were pollenized. This influ- 
ence of the pollen extends in varying measure to 
the size, color, flavor and firmness of the pistillate 
berry, thus making it all the more important that 
the staminate used to pollenize any given pistillate 
should be the nearest fitted for the purpose that 
intelligence and experience can furnish. 

In our catalogue (The Continental Plant Com- 



15 

pany, Kittrell, N. C.) the staminate and pistillate 
varieties are always distinguished, and you are told 
exactly what stiminate to plant with each and every 
pistillate. No other nurseryman takes as much 
pains in this subject. We know its supreme im- 
portance and give it corresponding attention. 

ARE STAHINATE OR PISTILLATE VARIETIES BEST? 

This is a query as old and as hard of an answer 
as " Who struck Billy Patterson." Much argument 
and no little temper has been wasted on both sides 
and agreement seems now farther off than ever. 

The advocates of staminate varieties argue that 
heavy and continuous rains occurring in blooming 
time wash out the pollen and prevent it from get- 
ting abroad. They also contend that very high 
winds blow it swiftly aloft and far away from pis- 
tillate blooms no matter how near. It is also 
pointed out that on extremely rainy or windy days 
no bee or insect ventures abroad to suck blooms and 
carry pollen from one to the other. The trouble in 
keeping the runners of the two varieties separate is 
also dwelt on. 

None of these arguments are without force, al- 
though exceedingly unfavorable weather, such as 
heavy and incesant rain, may prevent even stami- 
nate blooms from pollenizing themselves. But of 
course they are not as liable as pistillate to fail of 
pollenization. 

It seems never to have occurred to anyone that 
this controversy, like so many that distract the 
world, does not admit of final decision. What 
growers, or what at least, progressive growers seek 
are varieties that pay the largest and surest net 
profit ? Now in certain periods of time and certain 
localities these most profitable varieties may be 
staminates, and again in other periods and in other 
localities they may be pistillates. 



16 

Thus both in the sixties and the seventies it was 
clearly demonstrated that the Wilson Albany, a 
staminate, paid best. But a man, who during the 
eighties had stuck to the Wilson because it was a 
staminate, and refused to plant Cresent because it 
was a pistillate would have paid a pretty dear 
price for his obstinacy. For Cresent was then quite 
twice as prolifEc as Wilson and was generally the 
best paying of all varieties. Since then the pen- 
dulem of profit, while not oscillating quite so far 
either way, has swung first to staminate then pistil- 
late, as the merit of staminate and then of pistillate 
varieties were made manifest. 

The wise man ties to neither one or the other. 
He plants the variety, be it pistillate or staminate, 
which his own experience, or the experience of 
competent and reliable men, prove to be the best 
for his special need — the variety in which, for him, 
there are the most clear dollars. 



CHAPTEB V. 



PROPAGATING STRAWBERRY PLANTS. 

PROPAGATION FROM 9KED. 

There is little doubt that the strawberry plant 
originally propagated from the seed, for the oldest 
and most widely dispersed species still increase that 
way. 

Runner-propagation seems to have been a habit 
gradually acquired by such members of the family 
Fragaria as were, by various natural causes, re- 
moved from the comparatively bare mountain or 
hill-sides to the moist and weed-infested soil of 
lower, warmer regions. 

In such an environment a feeble, slow-growing 
plant like the strawberry seed produces would have 



17 



had a small chance in the struggle for existeiice. 
But nature is watchful of her children. Seeing 
that her lowly nursling was about to be crowded 
out of existence by her stouter and more robust 
offsprings she endowed the feebler one with a new 
mode of propagation. The quick-growing, quick- 
rooting runner was the result. 

Some varieties, like the Monthly Alpine, plant 
growers still propagate more successfully from seed 
than otherwise. 

But nearly all propagation from seed is now done 
to start new varieties. 

Owing partly to a tendency already developing 
when the strawberry was first reduced to cultiva- 
tion but mainly to the extensive crossing and re- 
crossing of varieties by modern nurserymen, straw- 
berry plants grown from seed vary widely from 
their parent or parents and from each other. ^ 

This variation is takan advantage of to originate 
new varieties, differing from each other widely in 
size, color, firmness, productiveness, flavor, time of 
ripening, etc. 

HOW TO GROW PIvANTS FROM SEED. 
Select large, fine, perfectly developed, and per- 
fectly ripe berries of the variety you like best. If 
a cross of any two given varieties is desired, pistil- 
late and staminate, select the berries of the pistillate 
growing with and pollenized by the desired stami- 
nate. Let no other than the desired staminate be 
grown within 300 feet. 

No little of the success of the seedling seems to 
depend upon the seed having been selected from 
fruit grown a good berry year — a year in which 
strawberries are generally large and prolific. There- 
fore plant no seed grown a bad berry year. 

The berries selected, crush and rub the pulp in 
fine, dry sand or earth till the seed are separated 



18 

and thoroughly mingled with the dry sand or earth, 
and keep dry to the following spring. Then sow 
these seed, sand and all, in rich, finely pulverized 
soil. Cover about one fourth of an inch deep with 
fine earth. Protect from beating rains. It is bet- 
ter to water exclusively by hand till the seed comes 
up, applying the water by some gentle means to 
prevent packing the soil. Keep the soil moist at 
all times. 

The young plants will appear in two or four 
weeks. Before they begin to crowd each other too 
much in the box or bed, transplant them in rich 
soil, setting the plants six inches apart in rows, the 
rows about two feet apart. Cultivate well during 
the summer and fall. Also cut off all runners as 
fast as they appear, so that the plants may make a 
vigorous growth. 

The following spring they will probably bear, 
not a full crop, but enough to give some indica- 
tion of their value or worthlessness. Often it is 
the second spring before any fruit of consequence 
is borne. Preserve the most promising plants for 
further tests, and destroy the others. 

Continue the above cultivation and runner-cut- 
ting for one more summer. The next spring you 
ought to be able to make a final decision. 

From the plants thus finally selected, runners can 
be allowed to grow on the third summer and young 
plants raised at will. 

But be not sanguine overmuch. Big prizes are 
scarce in this lottery as in all others. But thus, and 
only thus, does true progress come. 

PROPAGATION BY RUNNKES. 

Nature still propagates largely by means of seed, 
the result, owing to the similarity of varieties grow- 
ing near enough to each other for natural crossing, 
being a pretty close adherence to the type. But 



19 



man propagates almost entirely by means of run- 
ners. His propagation from seed is almost wholly 
for the purpose of originating new varieties; for 
the number of Monthly Alpines and their congen- 
ers grown from seed are but few. 

Runners begin to grow about blooming time and 
continue to form and take root in wet weather till 
frost. Plants obtained this way remain practically 
true to the type. Nor can two varieties thus mix 
except by an intermingling of the runners and the 
digging of them up together. A field set with such 
plants will, of course, have growing in it plants of 
the two or more varieties allowed to intermingle.^ 

Practically the only change that takes place in 
plants grown from runners is a slow, gradual and 
almost inevitable deterioration of running out of 
varieties. Bv intelligent and persistent selection of 
the best plants to raise runners from this tendency 
may be checked and even reversed, resulting in im- 
provement rather than deterioration. This breed- 
ing up is deemed so important to the highest^ suc- 
cess in strawberry-growing that a chapter will be 
devoted to the system long followed by myself and 
now continued on a larger scale by the Continental 
Plant Company, of which I am President and Gen- 
eral Manager. 

CHAPTER VI. 

THE STRAWBERRY AS AN ARTICLE OF DIET. 

The great healthfulness of the strawberry cannot 
be doubted by those who are fortunate enough to 
be able to eat the really luscious varieties in their 
fresh and thoroughly ripened state. He who judges 
the strawberry only by what he buys and eats m 
open market has but a slanderous notion of that 
Queen of Fruits. Market varieties are not only 



20 

necessarily gathered more or less unripe, so that 
they may be firm enough to stand transportation, 
but they are rarely or never the best eating varie- 
ties. The market grower and shipper of berries 
studies every other quality in the variety he selects 
to grow except the fitness to eat. It must be pro- 
ductive, large, firm, highly colored. But whether 
it is sweet as a sugar-plum or soui enough to make 
a razorback pig squeal concerns him not ; in fact 
they are almost sure to be sour, for the reason that 
firm varieties are nearly always sour varieties. 

As far removed as nectar from garbroth are the 
perfectly ripened, homegrown berries from the 
average offerings of the market. I would not be 
understood to thus depreciate all berries offered for 
sale. There are gardeners who raise and sell berries 
of which no man can rightly complain. Such should 
be liberally patronized, but they are scarcely more 
than the exceptions which prove the rule. 

If the strawberry is to be enjoyed in its supreme 
perfection, care must be exercised in the selection 
of varieties. Nor will the same varieties please all 
palates. But the great majority of people like a 
sweet berry ; not one of flat and insipid taste. 
These are not sweet, but tasteless. 

But what is wanted is as much sweetness as pos- 
sible to balance the natural racy acidity of the fruit. 
This has been attained in several of the best table 
varieties. I will not here name the varieties, for 
the reason that improvement in table varieties is 
now going on. The variety that is in this respect 
the best now, will almost surely not be the best a 
few years to come. Our semi-annual catalogue will 
enable one to select the best and most reliable vari- 
eties for home use or for market ; or we shall be 
glad to give by letter any advice needed. 

The right variety selected and grown, there is 



21 

another important point to be observed. The berry 
must be allowed to get rife. Many varieties, and 
some of the best, get red along time before they get 
ripe. In tact, redness often preceeds by nearly a 
week the state of perfect ripeness. This is indicated 
usually by the redness becoming blackish. 

Then it is that the strawberry becomes both food 
and medicine to the system overtaxed by the gross 
winter diet. It will not disagree with the most 
delicate stomach, especially if eaten without sugar. 
In fact, nothing spoils the perfect berry more than 
an excess of sugar. 

People find strawberries to disagree with them 
either because they are eaten while unripe, adding 
an excess of sugar to take the place of the sweetness 
which nature would have given a little later, or be- 
cause the variety eaten is of a nature too sour to be 
perfectly wholesome at any stage. 

The strawberry, ripening as it does as the fore- 
runner ard herald of all other fruits, rightly occu- 
pies a place of its own in the estimation of man,, 
and here men embraces women and children, if he 
ever does. Whether it is that the strawberry is 
superior to all other fruits, or whether it is that the 
then imperative need of fruit makes us think so, it 
matters not. One thing is certain, its color, fra- 
grance and aroma appeal to more senses, or appeal 
to them more strongly than later fruits can. 

It must be that nature, ever beneficient and seek- 
ing our good in spite of ourselves, makes it most 
enticing because we need it most. The palate 
craves its sprightly acidity because the liver needs 
its gentle action. It is one of nature^s boons, which 
she bestows to make amends for months of winter 
niggardliness — one of her sovereign remedies given 
to fit us to weather her approaching summer heats. 

A good strawberry bed or strawberry patch is a 



22 

thing of beauty and joy forever. Not even the 
watermelon patch or the cider-press can ever quite 
usurp its place in the boyish memory. They, com- 
ing later in a more plenteous season, have rivale in 
his heart. The strawberry has none. 

The helpfulness of the strawberry bed to the 
hard-run housewife, at her wit's end to cater to 
squeamish appetites amid the dreaded scarcity of 
spring, will not be questioned by one who ever en- 
joyed its benefits. 

The ways in which the fruit can be served are 
simply innumerable. A chapter in this Treatise 
will be devoted to that subject. 



CHAPTER YII. 



THE BEST SOIL FOR THE STRAWBERRY— ITS WON- 
DERFUL ADAPTIVENESS TO ALL SOILS AND CLI- 
MATES. 

No fruit, no plant or even weed, thrives over as 
vast a region of earth as the strawberry does. No 
continent or considerable body of land is without 
it in an indigenous form. Adapting itself to the 
environment, influenced by the conditions under 
which it exists, large or small, sweet or sour, bril- 
liant or pale-colored, as nature vouchsafes or refuses 
the three great requisites, sunshine, moisture and 
fertility, it is nevertheless always unmistakably the 
strawberry and nothing else. 

In the New World it is especially at home. From 
the frigid steeps of Alaska, down through the broad 
regions of the north temperate zone, under the 
equator — where it climbs the mountain sides for a 
genial habitat — along through the temperate regions 
■of the other hemisphere till it meets the ice of the 



far south, the wild strawberry extends in an almost 
unbroken chain. 

Grown in every genial spot over this broad and 
endlessly varied expanse by the hand of unaided 
nature, man, by supplying fertility, water where 
needed, but chiefly sunshine or breathing room by 
keeping down the smothering weeds and grasses, 
can grow it virtually everywhere. 

But to come to the practical point. What soil is 
best for the strawberry ? I might almost say, the 
soil that is manured the best and cultivated the 
best. 

I have never seen many acres of land on which, 
with reasonable care, the strawberry could not be 
successfully grown, and I have seen a great deal of 
mother earth. Of course it can be more easily and 
more successfully grown on some soils than others. 
But the soil in which it can be grown with the very 
highest success is very extensive indeed. 

The ideal strawberry soil is a black, sandy loam. 
Black soils, absorbing heat readily, berries grown 
on them are, as a rule, earlier. Even in hilly re- 
gions more or less of black, flat land, can often be 
found. It is usually swampy and sometimes very 
difficult to drain and reduce to fine tilt for cultiva- 
tion. But once put in proper condition it is ex- 
tremely valuable for the crop in question. 

In some regions there is one very strong objec- 
tion to growing strawberries on such low places. 
That is, the danger from frost is much greater, es- 
pecially when near small water courses — large 
bodies of water acts as protection from frost. But 
this danger is more than counterbalanced by the 
great productiveness of such soil of fine and early 
berries, especially as damage from frost can be pre- 
vented by a simple mode, to be given further on in 
this treatise. 



24 

It will not be amiss to repeat that such soils 
should not be planted in strawberries till thorough- 
ly drained, cleaned of all roots and trash and culti- 
vated for at least one year in corn or some other 
hoed crop. 

Yet those who cannot get such soil — and the vast 
majority cannot — need by no means despair. The 
largest and most profitable crop that I ever grew in 
my twenty-five years' experience (ii,ooo quarts an 
acre) was grown on almost the opposite kind of soil 
— a field running rather to stiff, red clay. This re- 
sult was obtained by intensive culture and manur- 
ing, directions for which will be given in due order. 
It goes to prove that after all more depends on the 
man than on the soil. 

Water being the sine qua non (without which 
nothing) of the strawberry — fully ninety-five per 
cent, of the berry being water — it is all important 
that a moist, rather than a dry soil, be chosen. 
Still it must be one not given to sogginess, or, if 
such, it must be corrected by proper drainage. 

Other things being even, a field sloping to the 
south will give the earliest berries. One sloping 
pretty steeply to the north, or northeast, will give 
the latest berries, especially if the growth of the 
plant is judiciously retarded in early spring by 
keeping them covered with mulch. 

On land sloping to the south, or better still, to 
the southeast, and protected by woods, evergreen 
hedges or buildings on the north side will usually 
give exceedingly early berries — somes two weeks 
earlier than unprotected fields. But a ditch should 
be dug between the woods and the strawberries and 
kept open so as to prevent the trees from robbing 
the plants of moisture and fertility. I have known 
broad borders along strawberry fields drawn and 
killed by tree roots in dry time. 



25 



The prevailing opinion that sandy loam will al- 
ways produce the earliest berries is not correct. I 
must qualify my statement that even a black, 
marshy loam will do sa Some varieties, notably 
the Bubach, ripen earlier on rather stiff soil than 
on any other. 

Safe advice to give an inexperienced grower, 
with only ordinary farm land to choose from, is to 
choose that on which the greatest variety of farm 
crops do the best. The nearer it approaches to what 
is considered good garden soil the better. 

Although in some sections strawberries are grown 
with considerable success on freshly cleared land, 
and in other sections on sod land, it is always wisest 
to avoid such land if possible. Land for strawberries 
should always, when possible, have been cultivated 
at least one year preceding in some other crop. 
Potato land is usually an excellent tilt for straw- 
berries. 

Land not previously cultivated is almost sure to 
be infested by cut-worm, white grub and other 
harmful pests. It is also apt to be full of weed and 
grass seed, which will add greatly to the labor of 
cultivating the strawberry crop. 

I will add that the general opinion that sandy 
loam is apt to be thirsty, and to suffer most from 
drought, is erroneous. As a rule, it suffers less 
than stiff land. Stiff soil, after every packing rain, 
is apt to bake and crack. But this can be largely 
prevented by timely stirring, which in summer 
should never be neglected. 

All soils, and especially very stiff and very sandy 
soils, ^ are vastly improved for strawberries by in- 
creasing the vegetable matter they contain. This 
can be done by turning under cowpea vines at the 
South and annual clover at the North. (The best 
varieties of cowpeas for rapidly improving land — 



26 

and nothing builds it up as fast and as surely — can 
always be bought at reasonable price of the Conti- 
nental Plant Co., Kittrell, N. C.) Stable manure 
also has an excellent effect in this respect. 

The presence of vegetable matter renders stiff 
soils more porous and penetrable by the plant 
roots in search of food and drink. It also renders 
both stiff and sandy soils far more retentive of 
moisture. 

I have also grown magnificent berries on what 
looked almost like pure sand, by the addition of 
vegetable matter and the liberal use of fertilizers. 



CHAPTER Till. 



MANURING STRAWBERRIES. 

It has been pretty well established that on aver- 
age soils the following is about the right propor- 
tion in which to apply the three great fertilizing 
properties : 

Ammonia, 3 per cent. 

Phosphoric acid, 7 per cent. 

Potash, 9 per cent. 

That is, that the analysis of 100 pounds of fer- 
tilizer should show the presence of three pounds 
ammonia, seven pounds of phosphoric acid and nine 
pounds potash, or in that proportion. While other 
properties are essential, they are required in exceed- 
ingly minute quantities, and are present in suffi- 
cient quantities in nearly all soils. 

Ammonia is the principle which gives plant 
growth, greenness and vigor. On freshly cleared 
land, and wherever there is a large quantity of de- 
caying vegetable matter, it is almost sure to be 
present in large quantities. It is the only property 



27 

which nature can herself return to soil depleted of 
it. True, she can in some small measure restore 
potash and phosphoric acid by means of plant roots, 
which go far down, appropriate it, bring it to the 
surface and leave it there on the death and decom- 
position of the plant. But this process is vastly 
slower than the one by which she restores ammonia 
to the soil. 

Ammonia forming one of the properties of the air, 
it finds its way into the soil in three ways. Rain 
carries in some. The soil obtains some by direct 
absorption from the air, but only in exceedingly 
minute quantities, except, where brush, leaves, 
stones, or something else partially excludes the air 
and conserves moisture. In such cases the accu- 
mulation of ammonia is often considerable, as is 
proven by the richness of spots thus protected for 
some years. The chief resource for saltpetre (a 
form of ammonia) was once old cellers and other 
walled and protected places. Indeed thence comes 
its very name — saltpetre, rock salt — salt obtained 
from rocks and walls. 

But the great source of amm^onia is from decay- 
ing vegetable matter. The growing plant, besides 
the ammonia obtained from the soil, absorbs a good 
deal from the air, which, upon its decomposition, 
passes into the soil. Thus do weeds and grass ful- 
fill their great part in the economy of nature. 

Man, learning from the great teacher, Nature, 
sees that he can supply the soil with ammonia most 
cheaply by following the same method — that is, by 
turning under green crops. For this purpose he 
selects clover, cowpea vines and other members of 
the vetch family, as they derive their ammonia more 
largely from the air than do other plants. Of all 
these the cowpea, where it can be grown, is infirM^; 
itely the best. Supplied with a little potash it will 



28 

grow on soils too poor to bring anything else ; 
proving it to feed more largely than any other from 
the ammonia in the air. Nevertheless some am- 
monia adds greatly to the luxiousness of the pea- 
vines on poor soil. A little cotton seed meal helps 
wonderfully. 

This is the main reason why turning under clover 
and peas is so beneficial. But the increase of vege- 
table matter is in itself highly beneficial. Its pres- 
ence renders stifF soils lighter, and all soils, especial- 
ly sandy ones, more retentive of moisture. 

For the best results most soils will need more 
ammonia than can be supplied by turning under 
green crops. In most sections this can be obtained 
more cheaply from cotton-seed meal than anything 
else. Besides, cotton-seed meal being a vegetable 
manure is less apt to burn the roots of newly set 
plants than any other fertilizer. It should be ap- 
plied broadcast, or in the drill and harrowed in. 
It should never be applied as a top dressing, its am- 
monia being volatile and liable to evaporate. Some 
find fiish scrap the cheapest source of ammonia. 
Like cotton-seed meal, it should never be applied 
as a top-dressing. Nitrate of soda should be used 
instead. 

The phosphoric acid is obtained mostly from acid 
phophate (phosphate rock dissolved in sulphuric 
acid), ground bone, or dissolved bone, which, being 
quicker in its action, is better for strawberries than 
ground bone. 

Potash is obtained from kainit, sulphate and muri- 
ate of potash. Hardwood ashes are also rich in 
potash, as are also tobacco stems. The growing of 
fine fruit largely depends on the liberal and judi- 
cious use of manure rich in potash. 

Stable manure, as well as the dropping of all 
animals, and fowls, contains all three properties — 



29 

ammonia, phosphoric acid and potash — but not in 
the right proportions for most crops. For straw- 
berries especially there is too much ammonia in 
proportion, and where largely used alone will result 
in finer plants than berries. Supplemented with 
hardwood ashes it is a perfect strawberry manure. 

The manure should be broadcasted and plowed in 
before planting. In this way it can be applied in 
almost unlimited quantities if well rotted. It can 
also be applied around the plants and, in climates 
cold as this, over them the following late fall and 
winter. Ashes can also be applied the same way. 
But they pay better in the fall, winter or very early 
spring, before the plants come into main bearing. 
Fifty bushels to the acre, or even more, can be 
safely applied. 

In winter, when the plants are in a dormant 
state, ashes or any kind of fertilizer can be sown 
over plants when they are dry. If wet with dew or 
rain, fertilizer is apt to burn the leaves. Never sow 
anything on plants while in a green or growing 
state — sow it around them. In the far South, 
where the strawberry grows all the winter, fertilizer 
must be sown around them. 

An excellent mixture can be made for top dress- 
ing (sowing over or around strawberries) as follows 
per acre : 

loo lbs. nitrate of soda. 

loo lbs. sulphate of potash. 

300 lbs. acid phosphate or dissolved bone. 

Crush all lumps and mix well with hoes before 
applying. 

Lacking cotton seed meal or plenty stable manure, 
the above mixture can be applied in the drill be- 
fore planting, again over or around the plants the 
following fall, and again the same very early the 
next spring. The strawberry needs liberal feeding, 



30 

but it should be a little at the time. A great deal 
of manure can be safely applied if done at intervals 
of say four months. 

Where very heavy manuring is to be given it 
should mostly be applied and thoroughly mixed 
with the soil before the plants are set. I have, 
with profit, thus turned in one ton cotton-seed 
meal, i,ooo pounds kainit or 300 pounds sulphate 
potash and 1,000 pounds acid phosphate per acre, 
and followed this the next winter, twelve months 
later, with a top dressing of 100 pou'ids nitrate of 
soda, 300 pounds acid phosphate and 100 pounds 
sulphate of potash. 

Where it is not practical to obtain the above in- 
gredients, very good results can be had by using 
some reliable commercial fertilizer rich in potash. 
Never forget that an excess of ammonia will make 
plant growth at the expense of berries, and if ap- 
plied too heavily within say six months preceding 
the ripening period, will tend to make the berries 
soft. Growers who have to ship a long way will 
need to be more careful on this point than those 
who are nearer market. Therefore, growers in the . 
far South who plant in fall for a crop the next 
spring, cannot use as much ammonia as growers 
elsewhere who plant in winter or spring for a crop 
a year or more later. It is more important that the 
grower in the far South should plant on soil already 
fairly rich in ammonia. The potash and phosphoric 
acid can be applied as directed in foregoing pages. 

The best soil for strawberries is that which has 
been heavily manured for some preceding crop, like 
potatoes or truck of some kind. Whenever practi- 
cable use that kind. Still very poor soils can be 
manured to make splendid crops of berries. 



31 

CHAPTER IX. 



TERRACINQ AN inPORTANT PART OF STRAWBERRY 
CULTURE. 

The strawberry grower should be an intensive 
manurer. His soil should be rich. If hilly, or even 
roiling, it will wash. When rains wash away such 
soil as that, it is washing away money from him 
and his forever. 

Prevent it by terracing. It is simple and effective. 
Even as a conserver of moisture it is of the highest 
value. There should be a terrace for every three 
feet of fall on the hill-side. That is each terrace 
should be three feet lower (perpendicular) than the 
terrace above it. This three feet perpendicular will 
put the terraces far apart or close together, as the 
field slopes gently or very steeply. 

SI.OPING TERRACES. 

Procure or make of light strips an A-shaped level, 
such as is used in getting the "fall" in ditching. 
Let the span be twelve feet and set it so as to allow 
and half inch fall in the twelve feet. Any ditcher 
will know what this means. 

Plow the land, leaving it as smooth as possible. 

Walk over the field and use your very best judg- 
ment as to the best direction for the water to be 
carried off, and also select the places where you 
think the terrace should begin. Put down your 
level three feet below the highest point and go 
where it leads you, allowing the half inch fall to 
the twelve feet span. A small stake, or a mark 
with a hoe, should be made at the foot of the 
A-shaped level as you go. This is to guide the 
plow in running off the terrace. 

The field thus marked off in terraces with a three 



feet drop between each, take a two-horse plow and 
throw up as high a bed as possible, so that the line 
marked off will form the ridge or higher part of the 
bed. The bed should be about eight feet wide. 

As soon as rain "firms" the soil, so that the plow 
can turn it well, go over it again with the plow and 
throw up the beds still higher. 

If it is not convenient to wait for rain to " firm " 
the soil, broad hoes can follow the plow and draw 
up the beds to a sloping crest or ridge along the 
line marked off by the level. A one-horse plow, 
followed by hoes, will answer ; when hoes are used 
one plowing with either plow will do. 

The field, all properly terraced, will consist of a 
series of high beds about eight feet wide, with a 
well defined depression (but not a ditch) above each 
bed or terrace. These depressions are to carry off 
the water. Be sure to have this bed strong enough 
to stand. It should be fully fifteen inches high 
after it settles, sloping gently each way. 

Now run your rows for strawberries so that they 
will run into and shed the water into this depres- 
sion up-hill, as it were, or in an opposite direction 
from that in which the water runs. These rows 
should have just enough fall towards the terrace to 
allow the water to run very slowly into this depres- 
sion above the terraces. 

Let your strawberry rows or beds run on across 
the depression and the crest of the terrace just as if 
they did not exist, only it will be best to lift the 
plow a little just at the crest so as not to break it 
down. 

The rows have to wind in comformity with the 
slope of the field and so as to enter the depressions 
between the terraces up-hill, but not an inch of 
space need be lost on account of them. The plants 



33 



are set the usual distance apart from one end of the 
row to the other. 

Thus terraced, the rains and the floods will beat 
on that field in vain. In fact rain, instead of wash- 
ing, improves it. The water follows the rows till 
it enters the depression between the terraces. As 
it enters up-hill, or in an opposite direction to that 
in which the water is flowing, it checks its already 
slow and gradual running off. 

The water flows off along this depression by 
gradually finding its way over the strawberry rows 
which cross it, just as if no terrace or depression 
existed. 

The water pours off so slowly that an enormous 
proportion of the rain-fall soaks into the soil for 
the future use of the plants. It never gets headway 
enough to do much washing. 

The terraces can be maintained forever without 
cost by always breaking up the land so as to throw 
the beds or terraces up higher every time. 

I^EVEL TERRACES. 

For many years we followed the sloping terrace 
system and most of our land is still so protected. 
During the past few years we have adopted the 
level system. This, while somewhat more expen- 
sive and calling for more care in running off the 
terraces, we find far better, especially for strawber- 
ries. Strawberries are, or should be, grown on 
very low beds or ridges. Being low they do not 
control the rain water like higher corn or cotton 
beds, but allow it to flow over them, collect in a 
body and do harm before the water is arrested by 
the terrace. 

Level terracing when completed prevents wash- 
ing almost absolutely. The terraces are run off at 
intervals of three feet fall between each as in slop- 
ing terraces. But the terraces have no fall, being 



34 

as nearly perfectly level from one end to the other 
as possible. 

They can be run off with the same A-shaped level, 
adjusted to run level instead of gently sloping lines. 
But it is better to use a more reliable telescope level 
which can be bought of different qualities and de- 
grees of accuracy from $5 up. We use a most ex- 
cellent one made by Messrs Gurley, Troy, N. Y. 

With this we run off, beginning three feet from 
the top of the hill or slope, level lines as far as it is 
desired to extend the terraces. These lines are each 
three feet in the perpendicular below the one above. 
The lines as run are marked with low stakes. On 
these lines the terraces are made. 

All subsequent plowing is done by a hill-side 
plow. This plow has a swivel wing which at the 
end of each furrow is turned over to throw the dirt 
down hill. The first furrow is run just above the 
line of a terrace throwing the dirt down hill to 
form this terrace. This is continued by furrows 
run each above the other, changing the swivel wing 
to the plow to throw the dirt down hill every time. 

This is continued till the next terrace line above 
is reached. Then leave unplowed a space say two 
feet broad, move up above that terrace and plow 
likewise, throwing the diit down to that till the 
next terrace line is reached and so on. As soon as 
rain settles the earth so that it will turn well repeat 
the plowing just as at first and so continue between 
each rain till the crest or lower border of each ter- 
race gets fully eighteen inches high. 

The aim is, by constantly throwing the dirt down 
hill, to finally reduce the strip of land between each 
terrace to an absolute level. This is attained by 
converting the hill-side into gigantic stair-steps. 
This is true terracing. It will take many plo wings 
to complete this system, and its gradual carrying out 



35 

should cover at least five years plowing. This gives 
time for the clay subsoil exposed on the upper 
border of each strip of land, by the constant shift- 
ing of the soil down hill, to be improved and made 
fit to produce. 

Our plan is to run off the terrace lines ; give one 
plowing with a large two horse swivel plow, and 
then draw up with hoes a strong bank four feet 
broad and two feet high. It will usually take two 
plowings and drawings with hoes to get this bank 
two feet. Even then it will be found not too large. 
Drawing up this bank entails a good deal of labor, 
but it ends the job forever as far as special work or 
the terrace is concerned. After that the one or two 
annual plowings with the swivel plow, throwing 
the dirt each time down to this bank will gradually 
level each strip of land by raising the lower edge 
and lowering the upper one. In fact the final re- 
sult to use a Hibernecism will be to make the lower 
side of each strip higher than the upper side. 

The rows in this system do not cross the terraces 
as in the falling terrace system. Instead, the rows 
are run level like the terraces. 

To the inexperienced terracing may seem a 
world of unnecessary trouble. They forget or 
probably do not know that every gallon of rain 
water that runs down a hill-side carries off fertility, 
never to return. The damage from washing to 
soil in the United States would, could it be com- 
puted, amounts to a stupendous sum annually — 
probably $100,000,000. That is if all fertility 
leacked out and conveyed off by rains was valued 
at the regular commercial rates. It has been esti- 
mated that a rich soil one foot deep contains the 
astonishing total of $2,800 worth of fertilizing 
properties per acre at market rates. Of course very 
little soil in this country is that rich. But average 



36 

good soil must contain several hundred dollars 
worth of fertility per acre, every ingredient con- 
sidered. 

Level terracing when completed virtually stops 
all loss of fertility from rain washing. Within a 
few years each strip of the terrace becomes a level 
plot or strip of land. Much of the rain water that 
falls soaks in, leaving some of the ammonia it ab- 
sorbs from the atmosphere, and rendering the soil 
far less likely to suffer from drought. Any excess 
of rain that fell would find its way slowly down- 
ward in a thin sheet over the rows of plants, or 
what ever crop was grown, and over the terraces, 
doing the minimum of harm. 

We always leave uncultivated a strip about three 
feet wide on the lower edge or crest of each terrace. 
Grass, but not high weeds, are allowed to grow on 
this crest to strengthen it and prevent the rains 
from washing it down. 

The only drawback to this system of terracing is 
first, that the terrace must be run off level to stand. 
If not level the water will collect in the lowest place 
and break the terrace. Second, the terraces must 
at the start be drawn up broad and strong as a 
break anywhere turns loose a damaging flood of 
water. Third, until several years of plowing levels 
the strip, pools of rain water are apt to collect in 
the depression just above each terrace, bank and 
in very wet seasons may " drown " several of the 
nearest rows of plants. 

Nevertheless, this system froferly carried out^ 
has merits that overweighs the drawbacks a hun- 
dred to one. 



37 

CHAPTER X. 



NEW VARIETIES. 

For the average grower to test all the myriads 
of new varieties that, with long strings of adjec- 
tives describing their virtues, are thrown on the 
market, would be impossible. To plant none of 
these because they are new, but to stick to the old 
because they are old, would be folly. 

The ease and quickness with which new varieties 
of strawberries can be originated has led to their 
propagation without number. The facilty of prop- 
agation has, on the whole, resulted in good. 

The great variability of most crosses, arising 
from the diverse ancestry of nearly all the varieties 
used for this purpose, has been employed in some 
instances greatly to improve the strawberry. Only 
by the strivings of many and the survival of the 
fittest can progress come here as in all other things. 

If the strawberry offerings on the great markets 
of the country do not average a great deal better 
than they did ten years ago — and I have not seen 
it disputed that they do average better — it would 
have to be attributed to the fact that so many more 
berries were grown that the same attention was not 
bestowed on them, quart for quart, as was formerly 
done. I am sure that the berries grown on our 
farms average twice as large as they did fifteen 
years ago. Higher culture and manuring has had 
much to do with the improvement, but better varie- 
ties has had still more to do with it. In fact, we 
could not now sell at a profit such berries as we 
then grew. As far as my experience goes, the men 
who have found the strawberry business unprofit- 
able are those who stuck obstinately to old varieties 
and the old methods of culture, packing, etc. 



38 

The progressive grower — and there is now no 
room for any other — while planting the bulk of his 
crop in the kinds of established merit, will at the 
same time not fail to plant, though less largely, of 
the new sorts. 

A beginner, or one who, seeing the folly of an 
adherence to old varieties, wishes to plant something 
better must necessarily depend more or less upon 
the experience of others. A good rule, in selecting 
a variety that you do not know, is to take, not the 
one that is praised the highest by any one nursery- 
man, be he ever so reliable, but the variety that 
does the best in the widest region or the whole 
country, for a variety may be a prodigy in one 
place, and of much less merit nearly everywhere 
else. Then I have noticed that the kinds that do 
well everywhere are least apt of all to deteriorate. 
They have a vitality and staying power, and their 
virtues are sturdy and slow to wane. 

I have sedulously avoided recommending any 
special variety or varieties in this treatise. I have 
not done it for the reason that the best varieties 
now will probably not remain the best up to the 
time when I shall have opportunity to revise the 
treatise. Improvement in modes of culture and 
nanuring are slow ; improvement in varieties, while 
less uniform, is more rapid. 

Another vital point in selecting a variety is to 
get the one best suited to your special needs. In 
some cases this may not be neither the largest, finest 
nor most productive berry. Nor may it be one 
possessing all these qualities combined. 

If you are a long way from market, firmness, 
carrying quality, has to be given the precedence 
over all other qualities. Ten thousand quarts to 
the acre will give little profit, and may entail actual 
loss, if they get to market a mere mass of wilted 



39 

pulp. Fifteen hundred quarts per acre of medium 
size glossy, highly-colored berries, carrying from the 
far South and arriving in the Northern markets 
firm and fresh very early in the season, will net a 
great deal of money. 

Still the vast improvement in transportation, and 
especially in refrigerator cars, is rendering it prac- 
ticable to carry safely much softer berries long dis- 
tances than was the case a few years ago. The 
final result will probably be that the remote grower 
will be enabled to think much less of firmness and 
much more of the other desirable qualities. 

By means of our semi-annual catalogue (Septem- 
ber and January) growers can keep informed as to 
the relative merits of old and new varieties and 
their fitness for general and special purposes. We 
keep under test over a hundred varieties all the 
time — many being added and many discarded every 
year. 

We never forget the fact that we are in the same 
boat with the growers, and must sink or swim as 
they sink or swim. Their success means the suc- 
cess of our nursery business. We spare no pains 
to discover the most profitable varieties for general 
or special purposes. Even if hoiesty did not impel 
us, self-interest would, to recommend to the grow- 
ers the kinds that will pay them the best. 



CHAPTER XI. 



WHEN TO SET STRAWBERRY PLANTS. 

Planting on a small scale can be done any time 
after the runners take root deep enough to form 
good plants — say after July 15th. But summer 
planting is almost sure to be a waste of labor and 
plants, unless pot-grown plants can be used. If 



40 

sufficient pains are used ordinary layer plants can 
be taken up by means of a garden trowel with a clod 
of earth adhering to the roots, and will answer nearly 
as well as if pot grown. The pot-grown plants 
are made by rooting the runners in earthen pots^ 
sunk in the soil of the strawberry bed for that pur- 
pose. The plants are, of course, removed from the 
pots at planting time. 

But even with such plants wet, cool weather 
must be chosen for planting during the summer 
months. Watering late in the evening and shading 
will be necessary should hot, dry weather come 
soon after planting. Summer planting requires 
more care and skill than the average grower is 
likely to bestow on it, and even with the utmost 
care and skill it is full of uncertainty. 

The strawberry loves coolness and moisture and 
is intolerant to heat and drought. Therefore, the 
right time to transplant is when the weather is 
cool, or even cold, and the soil uniformly moist. 

South of the latitude of Washington, D. C, 
planting can be done almost any day from Septem- 
ber 15th to April 15th, unless it is too wet or too 
cool to work out of doors. Unless the soil should 
happen to be unusually dry for that season it will 
not then be necessary to wait for rain. With 
thorough wetting of the roots and fairly careful 
setting, it is hard, indeed, not to get a good stand. 
I have followed this plan for years and never fail 
to get a good stand. I have frequently planted in 
January and had the temperature to drop to zero 
within a week, and no harm result. 

The only harm that extreme cold can do in this 
latitude would be on stiff, wet land, to heave the 
soil and lift the plants out. But I prevent this 
by stepping squarely and hard down on each plant 
set during the cold months on such soil. This 



L 



41 

compacts the soil and lessens heaving in hard 
freezes. 

The advantages of late fall and winter planting 
are manifold. It does not then conflict with other 
work. It can be carefully and properly done. If 
cold weather interferes for a few days and catches 
plants dug and not planted, they can be moistened 
and kept without harm till another favorable spell 
comes. A perfect stand is almost sure to result. 
The uncertain weather of spring finds the plant 
firmly rooted and growing. If the planting is not 
done later than March 15th the plants will get such 
a start as to be out of the way of the cut-worm when 
it gets warm enough for this deadly foe of the 
strawberry plant to begin his ravages. 

A great deal of planting is done in September 
with more or less success. We find it safer to wait 
till October. But as the sun is then still strong, 
and drought more than apt to occur, much more 
care is necessary than with later planting, nor is 
the result near as sure. 

While a good deal of planting is done at the North 
in the early fall, most of it is done in the spring, as 
early as out-door work is possible. But late fall 
and winter planting can be safely and surely done 
on light soils much farther north than is generally 
believed. In fact, plants may be set at any time, 
in any climate, and in any soil not at the time 
actually frozen, if at once properly protected. This 
can be done by covering the plants with straw, 
litter or coarse manure to a depth corresponding to 
the coldness of the climate. This should be deep 
enough greatly to lessen, but not to entirely pre- 
vent the freezing of the soil. 

The covering must be gradually removed as 
growth begins in the spring. If stable manure is 



42 

used the plants will be both protected and enriched, 
and will grow off finely when spring opens. 

A safe rule everywhere for spring planting is to 
plant as early as the conditions of weather will 
possibly admit of, and always to have the roots of 
the plant wet when it is set. 

The advocates of spring planting maintain that 
even at the South it is better, because the opening 
of the growing season finds the plants set in freshly 
plowed ground, and that they have a better show- 
ing than if set so early that spring finds the soil no 
longer light and fresh. I admit that plants trans- 
planted even as late as just before blooming time 
do nearly or quite as well as earlier planting, pro- 
vided plenty of rain follows. But that is often not 
the case. Cold, dry, windy weather is as apt as 
any to occur. 

This is just the weather for the cut- worm to get 
in his work, which some seasons and in some soils 
do much harm to tender, newly set plants. If this 
danger is escaped, and few plants die outright, more 
or less stunting is almost sure to be the result. The 
strawberry plant is slow to recover when thus 
stunted, and if a dry summer follows it never fully 
recovers. Nor have I ever once found spring-set 
plants to do better than those set in late fall and 
winter. Late fall, winter and very early spring 
planting allows time for replanting, though fields 
thus planted rarely need any replanting of con- 
sequence. 

Now, I by no means assert that spring planting 
cannot be done with success. A large portion of 
the crop of the country is yearly planted at that 
time. What long experience has convinced me of 
is that South or North planting should be done as 
early in winter or spring as soil and climate renders 
possible, and that a great deal of planting is done 



43 

too late, to the great loss and worry of the growers. 

The question is often asked me, can a crop of 
berries be gathered the following spring from fall 
set plants? Most decidedly yes, provided good, 
stout thrifty plants are set in good soil. On plants 
set in October and November we gather good crops 
of exceedingly large early berries. First-class 
plants set even after Christmas or as late as March 
will bear a good many surprisingly large berries, 
provided drought does not occur. The danger in 
allowing plants set after Christmas to bear the fol- 
lowing spring is that being as yet but feebly rooted 
and fruit bearing being an exhausting process, 
drought will stunt and may kill some of the plants. 
We make it a rule not to allow plants set after 
Christmas to bear, pinching o£E the blooms as fast 
as they come. 

But this applies only to field culture, where 
berries are grown on a large scale. Small garden 
plants can be watered and saved from drought. 
Water liberally late in the day and never while the 
hot sun is shinning. 

It is the second spring after planting that either 
fall or winter set plants will bear the heaviest 
crop. 

The above does not apply to plants set in Florida 
or the far South, which bear a full crop the next 
spring after setting. 



CHAPTER XII. 



FIELD CULTURE OF THE STRAWBERRY. 

PREPARATION. 

Directions as to choice of soils will be found 
under that headiug. 

The ideal preparation for strawberries would be 



u 

for the field to have been in crimson (annual) clover 
the previous winter — the clover stubble, or better 
still, the whole crop to have been turned under in 
May and the land put in cowpeas. The peas 
should be sown in drills, so as to admit of cultiva- 
tion with plow. The pea vines should be turned 
under early in September Half a ton of agricul- 
tural lime to the acre, sown broadcast as soon as 
the pea vines are turned under will pay on most 
soils. 

Of course few can make this ideal preparation, 
and it is by no means essential ; but usually straw- 
berry planting can be preceded by the clover or 
the peas. 

Whichever it is preceded by, or if preceded by 
neither, it is important that the soil should have 
been cultivated the summer previous. Some plant 
in the spring after cutting off or turning under a 
crop of crimson clover. The only objection to this 
is that it necessitates late spring planting, which is 
never safe, owing to the danger of drought. 

The field should be thoroughly plowed, and, if 
cloddy, well harrowed. We use a disc harrow, 
which reduces the roughest, trashiest soil to a 
fine tilth. If the subsoil is close and impervious to 
water, subsoiling will in many sections pay. Very 
good subsoiling can be done by plowing deeply 
with a medium sized wing, and having another 
plow, without a wing, but with a sharp point, to 
follow in the same furrow ; a coulter or bull-tongue 
plow to follow the first plow is still better. 

Plow the field twice this way, the second time 
diagonally across the first plowing. 

If the land is hilly, or given to washing, ter- 
racing will pay many times its cost. Full direc- 
tions for it is given under that heading. 

If stable manure is to be used (and no manure is 



45 

better, the only objection being the troublesome 
weeds it makes), it should be applied broadcast and 
plowed in. When fertilizer is used in heavy quan- 
tities it must also be applied in the same way. 

I often use a ton of cotton-seed meal in this way. 
While not a complete fertilizer for strawberries, 
nothing gives a finer plant-growth, and nothing is 
less apt, even when used in large quantities, to 
harm the newly set plants. 

Run o£E the rows three feet apart ; if you are 
short of land, two and a half feet will answer. But 
narrow rows are not as convenient to plow. 

Sow evenly in the furrows 500 pounds cotton- 
seed meal an acre. If not easily to be obtained, use 
in the same way 300 pounds of the mixture here- 
after given. Lacking both, then use 300 pounds 
good commercial fertilizer. If stable manure is 
liberally applied broadcast, as directed, none of the 
above fertilizers or cotton-seed meal need be applied 
at planting time. 

Mix whatever is sown in the drill thoroughly 
with the soil by running down the furrow a culti- 
vator or small harrow. List on this furrow with a 
light furrow from each side. The medium size 
wing will always throw dirt enough. Knock this 
list down very low with a drag or with hoes. An 
excellent drag can be easily made of an old plow 
beam and handles by nailing to or mortising in 
the beam a piece of scantling in place of the share. 
To the lower end of this scantling nail transversely 
a piece of plank twelve or fifteen inches long. As 
the horse draws forward the implement, this piece 
of plank, lying on and crosswise the list or bed, 
knocks it down low in proportion to the pressure 
exerted by the plowman. This device is a great 
saver of labor, and will last many years. 

If the land is not too rough, and the plowman a 



46 

steady one, a nail protruding an inch or more 
downward from the center of the drag, can be made 
to mark a fairly straight line to set the plants by. 
I never use a line in field-planting, but depend 
upon a marker as above described, or put at the 
work careful men who can open the holes for 
plants in a straight line down the center of 
the bed. 

For making the holes where a great deal of 
planting has to be done, a short pole, about four 
feet long, is best. This is sharpened wedge-shape 
at the larger and lower end. If the wood is very 
hard and the soil light, it will last some time as it 
is. It is better to have the wedge-shape, business 
end, lightly ironed. This iron should be of good 
metal, about three and a half inches wide and 
pretty sharp, to do good work. 

With this implement, broad holes can be opened 
very rapidly and without stooping. Make the holes 
by driving down the pole vigorously a little in ad- 
vance of you. Then by pressing it over as you go 
forward, it will be enlarged to the right size. Do 
not open the holes far enough ahead to get dry be- 
fore the plants are set. 

PI.ANTING. 

When the plants are to be kept in hills, or stools 
— by far the most practicable plan, on a large scale, 
with iatensive manuring and culture — about fifteen 
inches apart is the best distance to set. This re- 
quires 12,760 plants an acre. Some small-growing 
varieties may be set at twelve inches, and a few 
very large-growing ones require, on very rich soil, 
eighteen inches. They can be put two feet apart, 
and a few young plants only allowed to go out 
and occupy the space between. 

This mode requires fewer plants (7,500) to the 






I 



47 

acre, but great care mttst be taken, especially on 
rich soil, to see that the young plants do not set 
too thickly between the parent plants. If they do, 
fine berries cannot be expected. 

The plants to be set should be kept well pro- 
tected from sun and wind. A flour barrel, covered 
with a wet bag or cloth, set at the end of the rows 
and in the shade, if the sun is strong, is best. 

The plant roots should be thoroughly wetted as 
they are placed in the bucket for dropping. If the 
roots are very long, trim them back to four inches 
in length. 

The dropper — a boy or girl — can drop two rows, 
one on each side, and should keep only a few feet 
ahead, so that the roots will not dry before put in 
the ground. The planters should be reliable men 
or women, and should be charged to do their work 
well, instead of rapidly. 

The plant should be set deep enough to cover 
the roots well, but never to cover the bud. The 
earth must be pressed firmly to the roots from the 
bottom up. Some planters have a way of pressing 
the earth firmly about the bud and leaving a hollow 
place around the lower part of the roots. In win- 
ter, while the soil is ccol and wet, this might do 
little harm, but it would surely endanger the plants 
set in a hot, dry time. (See the cut, under Garden 
Cultivation, for the right depth to set.) 

ANOTHER MODE OF PLANTING. 

On any soil, not given to cloddiness, the follow- 
ing mode of planting will be found often cheapest 
and best. 

Make and knock down the lists or beds, as above 
directed. But instead of opening holes for the 
plants with the ironed stakes, split the bed half 
open by running down it a plow with a small 
wing. 



48 

Against the smooth or " land slide " side of the 
furrow thus opened, hold a plant, with the bud just 
level with the top of the furrow, and with the other 
hand draw enough earth back from where the 
plow threw it, and press around the plant, to cover 
it well up to the bud. What little open furrow is 
left between the plants will be covered at the first 
working. 

Plants set this way, if properly done, grow off 
very fast and are apt to do well. 

CUI^TIVATION. 

A very good crop of strawberries can be made 
by giving just work enough to keep down the weeds 
and grass. But cultivation, even if done only for 
this puipose, is more economical when done often. 
Not only the most effective, but the cheapest way, 
of killing weeds and grass, is before they appear. 
Three light workings with horse cultivator and 
hand-hoes cost less than one pitched battle with a 
grassy strawberry field. 

Still, for the best results the soil of a strawberry 
field should be lightly stirred as soon after every 
packing rain as it gets in order to work. This 
stirring by breaking the capillaries — the minute 
channels through which the moisture rises to the 
surface and evaporates — has an immense effect in 
enabling plants to pass unharmed through dry, 
hot weather. 

This can easily be proven by comparing, a week 
after a good rain, the soil of a cultivated field with 
one that has been left to bake and harden. 

This stirring should be shallow — not over two 
and a half inches deep, and much shallower than 
that immediately around the plants. 

The plowing should be done with a small-toothed 
cultivator, leaving a strip about six inches on each 



49 

side of the row of plants to be lightly stirred with 
hoes. Nothing is better for this than forked 
potato-hoes. But if the grass has got a start it will, 
of course, be necessary to use light weeding-hoes. 
This same mode of cultivation must continue as 
late as grass and weeds grow, or till about August 
15th. It will pay to continue it till frost, especially 
if the fall is dry. 

RUNNKR-CUTTING. 

If the hill or stool system is to be followed — 
usually the most profitable and almost the only 
practicable system with intensive culture on a large 
scale — the runners must be cut as fast and as late 
as they come. 

Never allow any runner-cutting implement other 
than a knife to enter your field of stool plants. 
Any old knife, whetted on a brick, will do. A 
quick boy or girl can with it cut runners almost as 
fast as they can walk. 

Runner-cutting devices are very good on smooth 
soil to narrow and keep within bounds matted rows. 
No device of this kind should be used on stool 
plants for the reason that they cannot cut the run- 
ners close. It is all-important that runners be cut 
close — between the first joint and the parent plant ; 
if not, a plant will form at the joint to dangle 
there unrooted, sapping the strength of the parent 
plant till cold weather kills the parasite, as it does 
all vegetation. As, often half a dozen or more of 
these parasite plants will thus form and hang to 
each parent plant, the total harm done to an acre 
is immense. 

The strongest objection urged against the stool 
system is that careless growers do not cut the run- 
ners in time — that they aie left to grow long 
enough to rob the parent plant of vigor before being 



50 

removed. This, while too often true, is wholly in- 
excusable. Runner-cutting is exceedingly simple 
and inexpensive if done promptly. 

MANAGEMENT OF THE MATTED ROW. 

Where the system is to be followed a few — 
never too many — runners may be allowed to grow 
and set young plants in the space between the old 
plants. This matted row should not exceed a foot 
in width. 

If proper care is to be taken to keep the young 
plants from setting too thick then the earlier in the 
season they set, the longer they will have to grow 
before frost, and the better. But if the bed is to be 
allowed to run wild and set all the plants it will^ 
the earlier the start the worse the overcrowding 
will be. 

Where such overcrowding occurs — and it is sure 
to occur on rich soils with most varieties — the bed 
should be thinned in the early fall. About six 
inches apart each way is a good distance to leave 
the plants. Still some rank-growing varieties willy 
on rich soil, need at least eight inches each way. 

This thinning process can hardly be properly 
done except with trowels, and is exceedingly 
tedious, aud indeed wholly impracticable, on any 
considerable scale. It is far better to control the 
number of runners, allowing only enough to come 
to form a thinly set matted row — always remem- 
bering that a very small plant in June or July can, 
before bearing time next spring, appropriate and 
indeed require, an astonishing quantity of space. 

To thus control the runners is pretty sure to en- 
tail vastly more work and worry, and in the end 
more expense, than to keep them cut off. 

Various runner-cutting devices are used to cut 
the runners as they seek to spread and thus keep 



51 

their thinly matted row, above described, within 
bounds. The plan almost universally recommend- 
ed, to keep these runners thrown back along the 
sides of the bed, by constantly running a cultivator 
along the middles, going always the same way, is 
decidedly wrong. The result of constantly crowd- 
ing runners back on the bed in that way is that it 
forms there a dense tangle of plants too crowded 
and spindling to bear much themselves or to allow 
the earlier set plants to do so. It is far better to 
cut off all the ends that encroach on the middle 
after the bed has become even thinly set. 

The matted row must be kept clean by carefully 
stirring among the young plants with a small hoe 
and hand-weeding whenever the hoe cannot get all 
the grass and weeds. 

The general practice of allowing the runners to 
mat as thick as they can, and then allowing weeds 
to grow in the bed and increase the overcrowding, 
cannot be too strongly condemned. I know of no 
better receipt for making five-cent berries, small, 
soft, pale and serving no purpose, but to glut and 
demoralize markets. 

While many follow the matted row system, I have 
always found the stool system not only the most 
economical but with most varieties also the best. 
An acre in stool plants will make in a good season 
as many quarts of marketable berries as one in 
matted rows. It suffers far less from drought. The 
berries are easier to mulch and keep clean. Being 
also easier to pick, a large acreage can be picked 
with a limited number of pickers. It is also far 
easier to protect stool plants from frost. Taking 
all these things into consideration, together with 
the advantage in cultivation of stool plants, I do 
not hesitate in giving them the preference. 

Still there are a few varieties which do not do 



52 

well when grown on stool or hill. The most noted 
instance is the Hoffman. Plants of this variety 
when stooled are given to " horning," in which the 
crown gets hard and woody and extends up above 
the surface somewhat like a horn. 

COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES 

OF THE STOOL SYSTEM AND OF THE 

MATTED ROW. 

The stool system costs more in the start, as it 
takes about sixty per cent, more plants and that 
much more setting, but in the end it costs less 
than the matted row, provided, of course, that 
both systems are properly carried out — and slip- 
shod, trifling measures no longer pay, in straw- 
berries or anything else. 

The result is rows of large, vigorous, deep-rooted, 
dark-green plants, capable of resisting drought dur- 
ing both the growing and bearing season. The 
crop of berries is apt to be, and the crop of market- 
able berries is almost sure to be, larger than in the 
matted rows. If drought comes — as it all too apt 
to do in berry times — the shallow-rooted matted 
row is sure to suffer most, and to suffer in propor- 
tion to the thickness of the plants. Then if the 
beds are at all too thickly set in plants the berries 
are sure in any season to be smaller, softer and 
paler in color. 

Stool plants can be grown on soil ever so badly 
infested with weeds, and grow well, for they can 
easily be kept clean with the horse-barrow and 
hand-hoes. If these dense weeds grow up in matted 
rows, it is extremely tedious and expensive to de- 
stroy them. The richer the soil, the thicker they 
come and the faster they grow. The same spring 
warmth that brings the struggling plant into leaf 
and bud and berry urges the weed into rampant 
growth. 



53 



Scrape the beds ever so carefully in the spring- 
— and they must never be omitted — before you ap- 
ply the mulch, to keep the berries clean, there will 
yet, on most soils, grow up through the mulch 
myriads of weeds that can only be removed tedi- 
ously by hand. 

Yet I would by no means be understood to say 
that large crops of fine berries cannot be grown in 
matted rows managed exactly right. What I do 
assert is, that it is more expensive, more difficult, 
and requires more experience to manage matted 
rows than stool plants exactly right. 

CHAPTER XIII. 



tJ^AKDEN C4JLTURE OF THE STRAWBERRJ. 

Pet plants, like pet animals, are apt to be overfed 
and half killed with kindness as long as the whim 
holds, and then neglected in proportion when it is 
off. 

It seems so easy to every one, of even ordinary 
diligence, to raise strawberries, that he wonders 
how anyone can fail in making them in abundance. 
If I had to give in two words the fullest instructions 
for their successful growing, these two words would 
be clean culture. The arch enemies of the lowly 
growing strawberry plant are grass and weeds. 
They not only weaken plant growth during the 
summer, but springing up betimes the following^ 
spring, rob it of sunlight and moisture, at the criti- 
cal time of fruit-bearing. And it must be remem- 
bered that the young plants when allowed to run 
riot and densely mat, as they will, on very rich soil, 
are in effect only weeds. 

Garden soil, like all rich soil, is almost sure to be 
badly infested with weed and grass seed. On this 
soil made still richer, the strawberry plants are 



54 

tisually set. Often so much manure is applied, or 
it is so imperfectly mixed with the soil, that many 
of the newly set plants come in contact with it in 
lumps and are killed. Then while the petting 
lasts the plants receive vastly more cultivation than 
they need. The mood of petting over, they are 
neglected. 

The result is that before the summer is past the 
strawberry bed is a forest of weeds so rampant and 
dense that one has to part the weeds to find the 
plants, and even then does not always succeed. 

Had the same cultivation crowded into four 
weeks been spread over four months, rows of vig- 
orous, deep green strawberry plants would have 
stood where now stands the unsightly tangle of 
weeds. 

I have begun thus backward in order to empha- 
size the all- important point of raising your straw- 
berries on one bed and your weeds on another — 
never both on the same one. 

The gardner confined to a smaller area has not 
the same choice of ground that the farmer has. 
Still I would refer him to what has been said in a 
former chapter about the comparative fitness of 
different soils. 

On a sunny spot to the south of buildings ber- 
ries lipen earlier and to the north of them later. 
Whenever practicable, it is a good plan to plant 
your earlier varieties in the southern exposure and 
your late ones with a northern exposure. The 
period through which this delicious fruit can be 
enjoyed will thus be very greatly prolonged. 

If the spot chosen is already very rich, no more 
manure need be applied before planting. If not, 
apply broadcast well rotted stable manure, chopped 
very fine, an inch deep. Also unleached wood- 
ashes, at the rate of a bushel to every twenty-five 



55 

square yards — ^^that is, to every five yards square. 
If leached, three times as many can be used. 

Chop in, mixing both thoroughly a foot deep 
with the soil, always remembering that manure 
not well mixed is poison to newly set plants. Cot- 
ton-seed meal, at the rate of ten pounds to every 
twenty-five square yards, will do as well, and in 
some instances better than the stable manure. The 
ashes should always be used if to be had. Chicken 
droppings can be used in place of the stable manure, 
and is about half the quantity. 

Where the above manures cannot be obtained, 
any reliable festilizer, rich in potash, will answer, 
using it at the rate of not over ten pounds to 
twenty-five square yards. 

The plants should be set a foot apart in the row, 
and the rows one foot apart. Between every series 
of three rows leave an alley or walkway two feet 
wide. 

Thus: 



TWO-FOOT AI.I.KY. 



TWO-FOOT AI.I.EY. 



The bed or plat on which the plants are set 
should have all clods broken fine and be raised 
little, if any, higher than the general level of the 



56 

garden. Every inch you raise the bed, the more 
it will suffer from drought. Care must be taken 
that the rain-water from the rest of the garden 
does not run over the bed and wash it. Dig a 
broad, shallow trench, banking the dirt next to the 
bed, if necessary. 

Use a line to plant by so as to get the rows 
straight. If the plants have very long roots, trim 
them back to about four inches. Open the holes 
with a dibble or garden trowel, deep enough and 
broad enough to allow the roots to be spread out 
like a fan. If no dibble or trowel is convenient 
to be had, one shaped and sharpened from an old 
shingle or piece of thin plank will answer. Drive 
it straight down, so as to let one side of the hole be 
perpendicular. Against this perpendicular side set 
the plants. Never set them in a hole deeper than 
the roots are long. I^et the earth come closely 
around roots with no hollow space at bottom, the 
hole not to be so shaped that the roots will be crum- 
pled up or be placed in any other position than a 
perpendicular one, or as near such as a partially 
fan-shaped position will admit of. 

Plant just the depth shown in following cut. 




The plants should be set just deep enough to 
cover the roots well and no deeper. Press the 
earth firmly around the roots. The bud must not 



57 



be covered. A great many plants are set two deep, 
resulting in smothering and retarding growth. 

If the soil is very rich or the plants are of a large 
growing variety, it will be better to set them fifteen 
inches apart each way than twelve inches, as 
recommended. 

South of the latitude of Washington, D. C, plant- 
ing can be done any time from September 15th to 
April 15th, except on very stiff, wet soil, subject to 
heaving during hard freezes. As on such soils 
newly set plants are liable to be lifted out of the 
ground and their roots left exposed, it is better not 
to plant between November 15th and March ist, 
unless a little straw, litter or coarse manure can be 
scattered around and over each plant. Stepping on 
the plant and compressing the earth about it after 
setting will usually prevent. Plants set on any 
soil at the North between those dates should be at 
once protected with mulch. 

Yet plants can be set during fall and winter on 
any soil not then frozen, in any latitude, if pro- 
tected by a mulch of straw or coarse stable manure, 
as above directed. In this latitude, where the ther- 
mometer rarely goes lower than ten degrees above 
zero, a mulch half an inch to an inch deep answers. 
In colder regions it must be increased in proportion. 

The object of the mulch is to lesson the hard 
freezing and heaving of the soil. Coarse manure 
not only protects, but its properties leached into 
the soil by rains and melting snow, fits it exactly 
to nourish the plant. 

The advantage of late fall and winter and very 
early spring planting is that then the soil is cold 
and moist ; the strawberry plant is then the easiest 
of all plants to live. In summer, very early fall 
and late spring, it is the hardest of all plants to get 
to live. 



58 

fX Good plants, carefully set on rich soil in October, 
November, or even during the winter, will bear a 
fair crop of exceedingly large berries the following 
spring, which will ripen much earlier than the ber- 
ries on older plants. Should drought come during 
bearing time, a young bed planted later than No- 
vember, if allowed to bear, must be liberally wat- 
ered ; if not the young plants will be stunted and 
perhaps die from exhaustion. If properly cared for, 
as below directed, they will bear two more crops, 
making three in all. If set after march 15th, the 
blooms should be pinched o£E and the plants not 
allowed to bear to the following year. In that case 
only two crops can be obtained. 

After two years the berries will run small and the 
plants unproductive, and should be plowed up, a 
young bed having been set the fall, winter or early 
spring preceding. 

If the planting is done in the fall or winter, and 
only coarse, fresh manure can be obtained, it will 
be better to apply it around the plants after they 
are set, drawing some over them as freezing 
weather comes on. 

CUI.TIVAT10N. 

As before stated this is simple and easy, if done 
in time. A fall or winter set bed will need but 
little cultivation till the next spring. If coarse 
manure has been used around the plants it will be 
better to leave it undistributed till after the berries 
ripen. But give weeds no truce. Pull them out, 
dig them out, get them out somehow — winter, sum- 
mer, spring or fall, as soon as they come. 

As soon as the berries are all gathered, cultiva- 
tion should begin. Stir the whole bed with a forked 
hoe about two inches deep, shallower just around 
the plant, after every packing rain. An hour's 



59 

work once every two weeks will usually serve to 
keep an average size bed in good condition. Keep 
this up as long as grass . and weeds grow. It can 
then be discontinued, although cultivation till 
frost, especially if the fall is dry, will pay well. 
Remember always that the time to kill grass is 
before it comes. Stir the soil frequently and it 
can never come. Three hour's work a month 
for four, or even five months, is surely not a dear 
price to pay for a strawberry bed. 

CUT THE RUNNERS. 

Fail not to cut the runners as J^ast as they come. 
If cut before they joint and start a young plant, 
the parent plant will form a new fruit bud for 
every runner thus timely cut o£F. Every fruit bud 
means another bunch of berries the following 
spring. 

Runner-cutting is ease and simplicity itself, if 
done in time. A boy with a knife — any old one 
whetted on a brick will do — can cut the runners 
from 500 plants in an hour, if done when they first 
come. This work should be done about every ten 
days. 

If the runners are allowed to grow at will, they 
will, in a surprising short time, form a dense mat 
of young plants, which will mutually choke each 
other and the parent plant, and result in a poor crop 
of small berries. 

Should a bed get thus over-run with young 
plants, it is always better, at the earliest opportu- 
nity, to chop them out with a weeding^-hoe, digging 
as shallow as practicable, leaving only the parent 
plant. Or if that has been hopelessly overcrowded 
and drained of vitality, then chop it out and leave 
young plants somewhat closer together than the 
old plants originally were — say about ten inches 



60 

apart, if the thinning is done in summer, and six 
or eight inches if done in the fall, when the grow- 
ing season is nearly over. 

PREPARING A BED FOR FRUITING. 

To insure a fine crop of large berries, manuring 
should begin the fall before. These directions are 
for a bed the fall following the fall, winter or spring 
in which the bed was planted. As elsewhere stated, 
too much manure rich in ammonia, as stable ma- 
nure and cotton seed meal is, will if applied within 
six months before fruiting, tend to make berries 
soft, and they do not ship so well. 

If the plants have made a luxuriant growth, 
showing the soil to be very rich, then apply in 
November around and between the plants one 
bushel of unleached hardwood ashes, or three 
bushels of leached ashes to every twenty-five square 
yards. Coal ashes are practically worthless for 
manure. 

If the ashes cannot conveniently be had, five 
pounds of kainit or two pounds sulphate of potash 
will take their place. 

But if the soil is not rich, as evidenced by large, 
vigorous plants, it will pay to apply around and 
between them stable manure, either old or fresh, to 
the depth of half an inch to one inch. 

In regions cold enough for the thermometer to 
sink to zero or lower, the strawberry plant needs 
winter protection, especially on stiff, wet soil, given 
to heaving. This protection may be given by an 
endless variety of substances. Coarse manure, 
coarse straw, kept from blowing off with clods or 
stones, corn stalks, pine straw (the stand-by of the 
Southern grower) and in fact, anything that does 
not lie so close as to smother the plants, and not 
liable to be blown off too bad by winds. This pro- 



61 

tection should be applied just as the ground begins 
to freeze hard, here about December ist to loth, 
and be deep enough not to prevent freezing entirely, 
but to lessen hard freezes greatly. It must be taken 
off the plants about the time growth begins in the 
spring. Plant growth can be retarded and later 
berries grown by keeping the mulch or protection 
on a little later. But care must be exercised as it 
turns warm, not to keep the plants covered too late, 
or they will be bleached and weakened. I uncover 
here about March ist. 

Enough of the straw mulch must be kept around 
and between the plants to keep the berries clean. 
It can be thus left quite thick, and is a great con- 
server of moisture, if taken from over the plants 
and placed carefully around and between them, in 
the alleys and all. 

There is great difference of opinion as to whether 
winter protection is best south of the latitude of 
Washington, D. C, or not. Crickets and injurious 
pests often find harbor under it to the harm of the 
plants. If not carefully applied it sometimes, dur- 
ing warm winter spells, bleaches plants and makes 
them tender. 

I have, after years of experiments, adopted a 
modified system of protection. I use stable manure, 
applying it between and close up around the plants, 
but not directly on them, all the ground being 
covered except the plant. This enriches the soil 
and at the same time it greatly lessens the heaving 
ing of the soil from constant freezes and thaws. 

If not manured the fall before, a strawberry bed 
may have the ashes or manure, as before directed, 
applied to it in the early spring or even at any 
time before blooming begins. Always remember 
that ashes, manure, or any kind of fertilizer, can be 
safely sown over strawberry plants in winter, while 



62 

they are in a dormant state. While in a green and 
growing state, it must be sown around them. But 
never sow anything, at any season, over the plants 
while they are wet with dew or rain. It will then 
surely stick and burn. 

Five hundred plants divided between early me- 
dium and late varieties should, when manured, 
supply an average-sized family liberally with de- 
licious berries for about six weeks. They will 
occupy a space about 20x40 feet, if set 12 inches 
apart each way. (See our catalogues as to best va- 
rieties.) 

Advice as to marketing the surplus berries of the 
garden bed, and making it a real revenue, will be 
given under the general heading — Selling Berries. 



CHAPTER XIV. 



GROWING STRAWBERRIES IN A BARREL. 

The most striking thing that I ever saw in the 
strawberry line was a barrel covered— fairly hid 
under a crop of strawberries. Any tiny bit of 
ground large enough to hold a barrel sitting up- 
right will suffice for the purpose, provided sunlight 
can reach it for the greater part of the day. 

Procure a barrel of any kind — whiskey, molasses 
or even a flour barrel will answer, though being 
smaller will not hold as many plants as the former 
kind. I see no reason why a kerosene oil barrel 
would not do. It would be of all kinds the most 
durable, being preserved by the oil it had absorbed. 

Knock the bottom out of the barrel, or bore it 
full of holes with an inch auger or even a larger 
one. These holes are to allow any excess of water 
to run out. Choose the warmest, most sheltered 



nook that you can find if in the sunshine from nine 
o'clock to at least three in the afternoon, and place 
the barrel in position Now bore the sides full of 
inch holes. These holes are to hold the plants. 
They can be only four inches apart each way, 
though this is rather close for the ranker growing 
varieties of strawberries At this distance a fifty 
gallon whiskey or oil barrel will hold about 125. 
The upper row of holes should not be too near the 
top of barrel, say fully six inches below. The 
lower row can be as near the bottom as you please. 
In boring these let the holes in each row dodge 
those on the row above, as shown in diagram for 
setting plants in garden bed. (See page 55). This 
method results in saving room and lessening the 
crowding of plants. 

This properly done, fill the barrel with good, 
rich garden soil. A bushel of well rotted stable 
manure and a gallon of hard wood ashes should 
be mixed with the soil. But it must be thoroughly 
mixed. Any considerable excess of either, es- 
pecially if the manure is fresh, will be apt to do 
harm and might cause complete failure. 

Pack the earth firm as you fill the barrel and let 
it be full of earth with a slight depression in the 
center. This depression is to pour water to invig- 
orate your strawberry crop. 

As the barrel is being filled with the thoroughly 
mixed earth and manure set your plants with the 
roots inside the barrel and the tops outside. They 
should be far enough inside to allow the earth to 
cover the roots well up to the bud, just as in plant- 
ing in the ground, but still not far enough in to 
smoother the plants. Careful observation with the 
first or bettom row of holes will show one how to 
set them. Continue to set as the barrel is filled, a 
plant ot each hole. 



64 

Except to apply water as needed, your work is 
now done. Only a moderate quantity of water will 
be needed tiil the plants begin to fruit, then a good 
deal more. See that enough water is applied to 
reach down to the bottom. But use judgment not 
to overdo either the manuring or the watering. 

Plants can be set in a barrel as in the ground at 
any time from September 15th to April 15th. If 
the barrel is set in a warm, sheltered place berries 
will ripen in it a good while earlier than in the 
open. Protection can be given from frost or even 
a pretty hard late spring freeze by simply covering 
your strawberry crop with an old blanket or a few 
bags. Newspapers are great protectors, paper being 
a non-conductor of heat. 

The quantity of berries that can be grown on a 
properly made, carefully treated barrel is prodi- 
gious. A small family might thus be liberally sup- 
plied for a whole season. An enterprising man or 
woman mijjht easily have more than one barrel 
and might sell the surplus. 

If necessary a moderate quantity of fertilizer or 
stable manure can be dissolved in the water and 
poured into the barrel. As plants thus set need 
never lack for either water or nourishment they 
should make a much better growth than those 
set in the open field, and bear larger crops soon 
after planting. A crop thus planted in fall or win- 
ter should bear a good crop the following spring, 
provided very large, well rooted plants were used 
and pains was taken in planting to speed the roots 
in a broad fan-shape, allowing them to adhere the 
maximum of food and drink. 

By clipping all runners it might be practicable to 
keep a barrel in bearing till two crops are ob- 
tained from it. After that it should be emptied 
and more plants set in it the following fall. It 



65 

will be usually found best to get only one crop and 
thus replant. 

The Continental Plant Company, Kittrell, N. C, 
furnishes collections of plants selected as to size 
and vigor especially for barrel planting. Also 
much more depends on the quality of plants in 
this mode of strawberry farming than any other. 
You cannot for a moment think of using any but 
the very best. 

A barrel painted red and set with strawberry 
plants as above described forms as pretty an orna- 
ment as a front yard or flower garden can have. 
Then the novelty of the thing makes it a great 
attraction. It would be a drawing card in a 
fllorist's show window or any other show window. 



CHAPTER XV. 



MULCHING, WINTER PROTECTION, PROTECTING 
BLOOMS FROM FROST, ETC. 

MULCHING. 

I shall restrict the word mulching to mean the 
use of any material to keep berries clean, and inci- 
dentally to conserve moisture. I say incidentally 
to conserve moisture, because the mulching usually 
employed has only a very slight e£Eect in that re- 
spect. Yet wherever it is practicable to apply the 
mulch thick enough a considerable saving of mois- 
ture will be the result, especially if the soil is 
stirred an inch deep and left in very fine condition 
just before the mulch is applied. 

Proper mulching is one of the most essential 
parts of successful strawberry growing. Without 
it rain is almost sure to beat grit or dirt on the ber- 
ries to their very great harm and depreciation of 



66 

value. I cannot recall but one spring in my 
twenty-eight years as a berry grower, in which 
mulching could have been dispensed with without 
loss. 

Almost an endless variety of material can be- 
and is, used for this purpose. Pine straw, pine 
needles or pine shatters, as it is usually called, is, 
where it can be obtaiaed, the ideal mulching ma- 
teria\ It can be easily adjusted around and among 
the plants, and is not easily blown off. Oat straw, 
wheat straw, marsh grass and all kinds of hay, is 
used. But care must be taken to use nothing that 
will infest the strawberry field with noxious weeds 
(and all weeds and plants except strawberry plants 
are noxious, as the strawberry plant itself becomes 
when too thick.) 

When any long, light straw is used it is best to 
cut it .up very fine to lessen its liability to be blown 
off. Where enough coarse stable manure is prop- 
erly applied no other mulching will be necessary. 
This is best applied about the beginning of winter. 

No matter what kind of mulch is used, too much 
care cannot be used in applying it evenly and effec- 
tively. I use pine straw and apply it very early in 
spring, before the plants' growth begins. It is 
scattered very evenly over the plant beds and mid- 
dles, and just thick enough to hide the ground 
well — about ten good two-horse loads to the acre. 

When growth starts the plants come up through 
the straw, the berries forming above it, and there- 
fore will be protected from sand dirt. Care must 
be taken not to have straw too deep over the plants. 
Ten loads evenly scattered will not be anywhere 
too deep. 

On soil infested with weeds, such early mulching 
is hardly practicable, as the weeds start to grow al- 
most with the strawberry plants, and unless scraped 



67 
out will, especially on rich soil, shoot up like 
magic, robbing the strawberry plants of sunlight 
and moisture at the critical time of ripening. Yet 
if a grower has no larger area than he can hand- 
weed well, the mulch can be applied as early as he 
chooses and the weeds pulled out as they come. 

If the mulching is applied late, after the plants 
begin to grow, it will be best to place it carefully 
around the plants. Where the plants are grown 
in stools or hills, it is comparatively easy with the 
hand to place the mulch so close around the plants 
that it will be under the berries. When thus ap- 
plied, it can be put on at any time up to the lipen- 
ing of the fruit. But don't wait too late. Even 
half-grown berries can get, and remain, mud and 
grit spattered. 

When mulch is used with a view to conserving 
the moisture in the soil, it must be applied much 
heavier than above directed. To do much good it 
must lie, after settling down, fully two inches deep 
over the whole grounds, beds and middles, though, 
of course, not on the plants. 

WINTER PROTECTION. 

Winter protection is chiefly used to lessen the 
heaving or lifting of the soil by hard freezing, and 
the mechanical injury done to the plants by the 
consequent breaking of their roots. Winter pro- 
tection is necessary in any climate in which the 
winter temperature falls any below zero, and will 
probably pay, especially in stiff soils given to 
heaving, where it does not get quite that cold. 

I have repeatedly tested the efficacy of winter 
protection myself with uncertain results. I have 
had it even after comparatively mild winters, in 
which the temperature did not go below 15 degrees 
above zero, to materially increase the crop of ber- 



68 

lies. Again, on the same soil, and after a similar 
winter, I could see no good effects. A strong ob- 
jection to winter protection at the South is that 
crickets and other insect pests are apt to harbor 
under it and eat the strawberry leaves. 

The best general rule south of the Mason and 
Dixon line is, until careful experiments have been 
made, to use no mulch covering except stable ma- 
nure or barn-yard manure, applied around and 
between the plants, but not immediately over them. 
I have never known insects to harbor under ma- 
nure. Ten or twenty large loads of manure can 
thus be used with splendid effect. It both protects 
and manures. 

A good time to apply winter protection of any 
kind is just about the time the ground freezes 
bard enough to drive on without breaking the 
crust — say about December loth for this latitude, 
and earlier as you go North. No matter what 
covering is used it must be mostly raked off before 
the plants' growth begins in the spring. It can 
then be scattered around them as a mulch. 

PROTECTING BLOOMS FROM FROST. 

This is chiefly and effectively done here as fol- 
lows : Have your straw or mulch ready distributed 
along the middles by the time the plants bloom. 
Straw used for winter protection and which has 
been raked off and left in the middles, as plant 
growth begins, will be just in place for the purpose. 

When frost threatens, or the Weather Bureau 
gives warning, the straw can be rapidly raked on 
the plants, covering and protecting blooms most 
especially. 

This covering, to thoroughly protect, must be 
deep enough to hide plants and blooms well. Even 
if still deeper it will do no harm. It can, without 



harm, remain as long as three nights on the blooms, 
and a night or two longer, if weather keeps cold. 
Bnt it should remain on the plants no longer than 
necessary. 

As soon as the danger is past rake it off and 
leave it in the middle nearby for next time. Both 
the rakings, on and off, can be very rapidly and 
economically done, and pays well. From ten to 
fifteen large loads of pine straw are used per acre. 
But a great variety of material can be used. Even 
pine or evergreen bushes of any kind are quite 
effective. 

This mode of protecting may seem a simple and 
unimportant one. But it is not. All the most 
successful growers in this State, men who have 
accumulated fortunes by raising and shipping 
strawberries to Northern markets, owe their success 
and wealth largely to this simple device, a device 
embodying the ripest experience of the most in- 
telligent and observant growers. By means of it 
they are able to grow early varieties, largely to 
defy frost, to ship large quantities of berries to 
bare markets and command high prices. This, 
too, while unfrosted fields are not ripening a 
berry. In fact it gives the progressive, alert grower 
the very chance he craves. 



CHAPTER XVI. 



FORCING STRAWBERRIES. 

Any greenhouse may be used for forcing straw- 
berries, if the plants can be placed close to the 
glass. But if they are placed even several feet 
below the glass, the plants are almost sure to grow 
up spindling and weak. As a rule, low walled pits, 
heated by brick flues, are best. Sufficient warmth 



70 

is sometimes derived from the fermentation of 
coarse, fresh manure, packed hard a foot deep in 
the bottom of the pit, and changed when it ceases 
to give heat. 

Strawberries may also be forced in the window 
of a room, in which the temperature is never al- 
lowed to drop lower than ten degrees above freez- 
ing. Any lady with a hot-house could easily grow 
plants of strawberries along with her flowers, as the 
strawberry is hardier than most flowers. Very 
early berries can also be grown without heat in 
ordinary flower pits, covered with glass sash. The 
glass would admit the sun-heat, and shutters or 
straw thrown over the sash at night would keep 
out the cold. With a little care and skill berries 
might be obtained this way quite a month before 
ripening time out of doois. Where artificial heat 
is used they can be ripened at any time during the 
winter. 

For the best results set young plants in five-inch 
pots early in spring. In July shift these plants to 
eight-inch pots, being careful not to break the clod 
of earth in which the roots grow. The soil in both 
pots should be rich and compact, with a few pieces 
of old sod at the bottom to insure drainage. 

Both the small and large pots should, at all times, 
be kept plunged in earth, sufl&ciently watered, and 
all runners and blooms should be removed as fast 
as they come. 

Very good, but not as large and productive, 
plants can be obtained by covering runners to root 
in June or July in four-inch pots, plunged in the 
soil along the rows for the purpose. These plants 
should, in the early fall, be shifted into six-inch 
pots, as above directed. It will be better to allow 
the plants to go through at least one freeze before 
they are housed. 



71 

The plants should be placed in the forcing-house 
about ten weeks before the time the ripe berries are 
desired. The temperature should be low at first. 
As the plants begin to grow, it should be increased 
to about 75 degrees and never allowed to fall below 
50 degrees. A suflSciency of water must of course 
be applied to supply the needs of the plants, but 
too much has a most injurious effect. Use a syringe 
or very fine sprinkler in watering. 

As much air as possible, without lowering the 
temperature too much, should be admitted, especi- 
ally at blooming time. The middle of sunshiny 
days should, always in the dead of winter, be chosen 
for this purpose. Currents of air are very necessary 
to loosen the pollen from the stamens and carry it 
to the pistils of the blossoms. In some cases it is 
found necessary to use a soft camePs-hair brush to 
dust the pollen from one to the other. 
I 'Staminate, or self-pollenizing varieties should- 
always be used for forcing. The best kinds for 
unskilled growers are varieties of the monthly 
Alpine berry, as they take more kindly to this pro- 
cess than any others, andean stand a lower temper- 
ature. But skilled growers find no trouble in forcing 
any of the choice, large staminate kinds. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



RENEWING OLD BEDS. 

The best way to treat an old bed is to plow it 
under immediately after bearing — having a young 
bed set the previous fall, winter or spring. The 
land can then be prepared in full time for summer 
or fall vegetables. Sweet potatoes thrive well 
where an old strawberry bed has been plowed up. 



72 

But often, owing to lack of space, or, more apt, 
lack of providence, the young bed has not been set, 
and the old bed is the only resouice for berries the 
coming year. I give the best mode of treating it to 
that end : 

An old bed is almost sure to be a tangle of thickly- 
set plant and weeds. Cut all these down as closely 
as possible with a grass blade. Let the weeds and 
plant leaves thus cut get thoroughly dry ; then 
loosen up with fork, or rake the straw used to 
mulch, then on some dry day burn the bed o£E. If 
no mulch has been used, and there is not enough 
of the dead plant and weeds to feed a fire, it may 
be necessary to scatter a little straw or dry litter 
over the bed to act as fuel. 

This burning o£E, while not essential, is of great 
benefit. It destroys all insect pests, most of the 
pestiferous weed seed, and does the plants no harm. 
In fact, they are pretty sure to look better a month 
later than if they had not been through the flames. 

Of course some judgment must be used in this 
purification by fire. It would be possible to use so 
much straw, have the fire so hot as to kill the 
plants ; but this is not at all likely to be the case. 

Well, the bed burnt over, or not burnt over, side 
the rows with a turning plow, leaving a strip about 
six inches wide. If the plants are scarce or scat- 
tering, it may be necessary to leave a wider strip 
in order to get a stand. This siding or " barring 
ofE " will at the same time smother all weeds and 
plants in the middles between the rows. 

Now, with a weeding-hoe, chop out the plants 
left on the above strip so that they will stand about 
a foot a part. The width of a weeding hoe will be 
about right. 

Ten days later sow in the furrow left by the 
" barring off,'* and also between the plants, 300 to 



73 

500 pounds per acre of the fertilizer recommended 
in the chapter on Manures. Then split the middles 
with a turning-plow, which will throw the earth 
around the plants. Even and smooth with a hoe. 
Thereafter cultivate and manure the bed or field as 
a young field, directions for which are given in the 
chapter devoted to that subject. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



BREEDING UP STRAWBERRY TARIETIES BY 
SELECTION. 

Deterioration, more or less rapid, seems to be the 
fate of all species of plants and animals. This pro- 
cess is arrested and reversed by selection, natural 
or artificial. 

Owing to the variability inherent in the straw- 
berry, deterioration, degeneration acts quicker than 
in other fruits. Only a very few exceedingly virile 
varieties, such as the old Wilson, have sufficient 
vigor and stamina to hold out over a quarter of a 
century. Many apparently excellent varieties have 
run out in much less than half that time. 

We have long practiced the following simple and 
efFective method which we believe will arrest, and 
in a great measure, reverse the process of deteriora- 
tion. It calls for vigilance and perseverence, but 
the superiority of our plants in vigor and produc- 
tiveness prove that it pays : 

Go over the fields in ferson just as the berries 
are getting their full size, but before they ripen 
much — the ripening, seed-forming process, is what 
exhausts the plant. As you go over select the plant 
showing in the most marked degree the qualities 
that you desire. These qualities will usually be 



74 

vigor and healthfulness of plant and productiveness, 
size of berries and probably earliness of ripening. 

Plants thus carefully and discriminatingly se- 
lected must have all blooms and berries pulled off, 
and marked by driving a stake down by each one, 
or, better still, removed with a garden trowel, taking 
up a large clod of earth with the plants, and reset 
on rich soil, disturbing the roots as little as possible, 
and watering if necessary. 

The latter plan, while at the beginning more 
troublesome, is, in the long run, best and easiest. 
For the plants thus taken up can be set in a con- 
venient place, each variety to itself, and given 
special attention. If marked and left in the field 
care must be used to prevent the runners of the 
chosen plants from running into and mixing with 
those of other nearby plants. Where those are left 
it will be best to chop out and destroy the nearest 
plants on each side to lessen the danger of this 
mixing. 

One hundred to two hundred plants, according 
to the runner-making quality of the variety, will 
be required to make young plants enough to set an 
acre the following fall, winter or spring. 

If these young plants are carefully transplanted 
the following fall, they will attain sufficient vigor 
by the next spring to admit of another selecting 
process, exactly similar to that of the spring pre- 
vious. 

This process of selecting can be continued in- 
definitely, and the bearing fields set as fast as pos- 
sible in the bred-up plants. Thus, on the one acre 
set with plants grown from the selected two hun- 
dred, may be grown enough plants for the whole 
farm and more. 

Every year after second year, if this plan is dili- 
gently followed, all the planting of each variety 



75 



can be done with plants grown from selected par- 
ents, and in a few years the result of these repeated 
selections will be apparent. 

This plan has been attacked and decried. But 
when I asked my opponents whether they would 
value most the grogeny of a long line of Jersey 
cows selected in each generation for their superior 
butter-making qualities, or to have the offspring of 
a line of scrub Jerseys, noted for nothing but bear- 
ing a great name, and asked them why the selec- 
tion process, so indisputably rich in results with 
both animals and plants, shall be of no effect with 
the strawberry, they were silenced. 

A tree can be justly judged only by its fruit, and 
any plan or system only by its results. My mode 
has ended in success, and success is a powerful and 
sufficient argument. 



CHAPTEK XIX 



PICKING AND SHIPPING STRAWBERRIES. 

Once begun, the strawberry ripens surprisingly 
fast. Daily picking will be necessary, unless very 
cold weather should intervene and check the ripen- 
ing. While the cold lasts, picking every other day 
may be best. A sudden warm, wet spell will vastly 
increase the ripening and also tend to soften the 
berries, and calls for greater care in handling. If 
this spell should occur Saturday and Sunday, Mon- 
day's picking will be unusually heavy. Provision 
should be made for this by having an extra force 
of pickers promptly on hand. Besides, the fields 
should always be picked very clean of ripe berries 
on Saturday. It is better to gather all that are 
even a shade less ripe than would be taken on 
other days. 



The berries should be picked as red and ripe as 
possible, to allow for transportation to market. 
Varieties naturally firm can, of course, be picked 
much riper than other kinds. Where refrigerator 
cars are used, the berries can also be shipped riper, 
as the cold air of the cars checks ripening in tran- 
sit, at the same time that it keeps the fruit perfectly 
firm. 

After testing all modes of ticketing and keeping 
count I am convinced that simple tickets are to be 
given for each cup of berries are best. 

SORTING AND GRADING. 

In the far South the strawberry maturing in 
winter, or very early spring, ripens slowly and 
unevenly. There it will usually pay to sort and 
grade the berries after picking, especially as long 
as prices remain high and the consumers capricious 
and exacting. But elsewhere, where the berries 
ripen quicker and more evenly, the handling nec- 
essary in sorting is apt to do more harm than the 
grading will do good. If the sizes are to be sepa- 
rated, it is better to have the pickers carry in the 
hand two cups or baskets, putting the large berries 
in one and the small ones in the other. 

CONTROI. OF PICKERS. 

Proper picking, handling and packing is the 
most important part of strawberry culture. Many 
and many a crop of fine berries is ruined right 
here. 

With only a small plot of ground in berries, 
which a man might pick with his own family or 
with a few pickers under his immediate supervision, 
the matter is comparatively simple. But with a 
greater acreage, necessitating the employment of 
a large number of pickers, strawberry-gathering be- 



77 



comes a business, calling for much judgment, and 
no little diplomacy, strategy and knowledge of 
human nature. With the pickers, who are sure to 
be more or less careless and irresponsible, largely 
rests whether the berries on which you have spent 
so much money or toil, or both, shall pay or not 
pay. It is, therefore, all-important that you offer 
every incentive and use every artifice to cause them 
to serve your interest, at the same time that they 
are serving their own. 

Have not too few pickers or too many. Too few 
will not have the berries picked each day in time. 
With too many, each one will make too little money 
to make them eager to please and keep their jobs. 

Women and girls make far the best pickers. 
They have a better eye for color and can handle 
the berries more deftly and nicely than the rougher 
sex. Boys are about the worst aninaals that can 
be turned into a strawberry field. The are apt 
to be careless, sloven and given to larking and 
pranking. 

Then the female sex is naturally abstemious, 
man is an eater, and the boy beats the man. Some 
writers insist that the pickers be allowed to eat all 
ihey want — on the Biblical principle, I suppose, 
that the ox and ass that trample out the grain must 
not be muzzled. But I insist that the analogy does 
not hold. An eating picker consumes the largest, 
reddest and choicest berries himself, leaving you, 
as far as the cubic capacity of his stomach will per- 
mit, only the second or third choice. And a boy's 
cubic capacity is marvelous, where strawberries are 
concerned. 

Again, most of the eating is done at the begin- 
ning of the ripening season,- when berries are sell- 
ing high. I tell you it costs money to fill a hun- 
dred, or even a score of stomachs daily, to keep 



78 

them full during the picking hours with twenty- 
five-cent-a-quart berries. Later prices drop low and 
you do not grudge him a feast, but lo ! he is so sur- 
feited on twenty- five-cent berries that he scorns 
eight- cent ones. 

A good plan is to award to each picker for the 
season, or during good behavior, as many rows as 
she can pick properly and in time. Let each one 
bring a stick with her name written on it, to mark 
the rows. Then even at the expense of some in- 
convenience to yourself, let each picker, if diligent 
and industrious, pick and get pay for all the berries 
on their rows. I find this to have a wonderfully 
good effect. 

Each picker feels that she has a property in her 
rows and cares for them as her own. She is care- 
ful not to trample the plants and unripe berries 
herself, or to.suffer any one else to do so. An ex- 
amination of the fields each day after the picking 
is done will show whose rows are picked the best 
and cared for the best. Some small but desirable 
prize should be given for the best kept rows. 

Pickers should be constantly warned not to 
touch the fruit with their fingers. With each berry, 
should be pinched off a stem, nearly an inch long. 
These stems act as handles to hold the berries by 
till they are dropped in the cup, and also as springs 
to give elasticity to the cup of berries and prevent 
crushing. They also, by keeping the contents 
loose, aid materially in ventilation. 

The cup — and by cup I mean a quart basket, 
made of thin veneering — must always be well filled 
and slightly heaped in the middle. Better have it 
too full and let a berry or two be crushed, than 
have it sent to market scant and scamped looking. 
A little settling is sure to occur on the way. 

Bach cup should be neatly and evenly capped off 



79 

with handsome berries — not necessarily the largest, 
but with attractive fruit, the brightest, reddest side 
up. 

The packing should always be done m a con- 
veniently located house or tent, where it will be 
protected from both sun and rain. Unless carriers 
are sent around to bring in the berries, it is best to 
provide each picker with a tray or picking stand. 
If this tray has a top to protect from sun and rain, 
all the better. Ivight, fairly substantial ones can 
be bought cheaply of the crate factories. 

Where a large acreage has to be picked with a 
limited picking force, it is better to have carriers 
bring in the berries, so that the packers need lose 
no time. 

Besides keeping a close supervision of the field 
it is well to have each picker numbered and to let 
each picker mark her number on every cup she 
fills. Then the cups can be examined and it can be 
found out who picks right and who picks wrong. 
Take a cup of berries and turn it bottom up into 
an empty cup now and then and note the number. 
Let it be widely known that many will be thus 
treated. Again, give some small but desirable prize 
to the one whose cups thus examined show the best 
picking. 

CRATES. 

Let the crates and cups always be new, fresh 
and clean, if possible. A light gift crate to be 
given with the berries will, as a rule, pay the best. 
As to their size, defend solely ufon the advice of 
the commission merchant you ship to. Different 
markets require different sizes. The eastern mar- 
kets calls mostly for a 32-quart gift crate. 

I would like to say, in passing that the South- 
side Manufacturing Company, Petersburg, Va., 



80 

owing to peculiarly advantageous conditions as to 
cheapness of labor, timber, shipping facilities, etc., 
can supply a better crate for the same money and 
as good crates for less money than any similar 
concern in the United States. 

No matter how far you live, it will pay you to 
buy from them. Get up a club and order a car- 
load. Freight to even a great distance will be very 
low. 

PICKING WET AND DRY. 

Much has been written as to the comparative 
carrying qualities of berries picked early when wet 
with dew or late when the sun dries it o£E. 

Now, with refrigerator cars it matters less 
whether the berries are wet or dry, hot or cold. A 
chilling process begins as soon as they enter the car, 
and, with the best system, a drying, process as soon 
as the car gets in motion. Berries picked under 
the hottest noonday sun can be at once stored in 
them to carry perfectly. But for express shipments 
it is different. And to its superior quickness in 
getting berries to market before prices decline — and 
a day or two often makes a great difference — the 
express service will always be liberally patronized 
by strawberry growers. 

Berries, to carry well by express, must be picked 
cool. Pick them dry if you can ; pick them wet 
if you must. But pick them cool. 

COMMISSION MERCHANTS. 

There are bad commission men and good com- 
mission men, jost as in all other walks of life. But 
as a class they are more sinned against than sin- 
ning. It is nearly always the shipper of poor, 
worthless fruit that the commission men treat 
wrong and steal from. Somehow the grower of 



81 

good berries happens not to get chiseled. Strange 
fellows, those commission chaps, who take the 
piddler's mite and forget the competent fruit- 
grower's pile. They must go on the principle that 
to those who have there shall be given, but from 
those who hath not there shall be taken even what 
little they hath. More likely the shipper of sorry 
fruit hath little or nothing to either take or make 
returns of. 

But folly or wisdom, aside with it. Ship to no 
commission house that does not give good bank 
reference, nor till you ascertain from reference thus 
given that it is thoroughly reliable. 

New York is the largest and, all in all, the best 
strawberry market in the world. Smith & Hol- 
den, 311 Washington street (New York), are not 
surpassed in that great mart as live and reliable 
fruit commission men. 



CHAPTER XX. 



SELLING STRAWBERRIES— FINDIiNG AND CREATING 
A MARKET. 

It has been truly said that of the necessities of 
life the demand creates the supply, but with luxu- 
ries the supply creates the demand. This is cer- 
tainly the case with the strawberry. There is some- 
thing so very captivating, so appetizing in the color 
and fragrance of this fruit, that its presence creates 
a lively demand, provided, of course, that the ber- 
ries are large, ripe and luscious. 

Of course, when the berries are shipped, all that 
the grower can do is to see that his berries are 
properly picked, packed in fresh, clean cups and 
crates, and shipped to a reliable commission mer- 
chant on the market in which the class of fruit he 



82 

grows will bring the best net price. This is not 
always, or even oftenest, the nearest market. For, 
as I have elsewhere stated, quick express and re- 
frigerator service have made one market nearly as 
close as another. 

But to return to the subject of creating a market 
for strawberries. With tact and perseverance this 
can be done in any town, village or almost any 
rural neighborhood, and a very small plot of ground 
made to yield a snug profit. There is no calling 
more congenial to a lady or in which her superior 
taste and neatness would be more telling. 

While one should endeavor to grow only first- 
class berries, no matter for what market intended, 
those to be retailed at home should be not only at- 
tractive in appearance but thoroughly ripe and of 
a well flavored, good table variety. This is a point 
especially dwelt on in our plant catalogue. Conti- 
nental Plant Co., Kittrell, N. C. 

Your plantings should embrace early, medium 
and late varieties, so that your berry season may be 
as long as possible. As easy as the strawberry is 
to grow the majority of people, even though own- 
ing gardens, and even farms, will be found without 
them, and, as a rule, far more eager to buy them 
than to buy any other kind of fruit whatever. 

The chief point is to let it be known as widely 
as possible that you have really ripe, choice berries 
for sale at a reasonable price. This can be done in 
various ways, none of which should, if practicable, 
be neglected. The mere fact of having fancy ber- 
ries, daintily handled, is, in itself, a great advertise- 
ment. Personal solicitation, in which contracts 
may be made to supply families for daily table use 
and for preserving purposes, would sell large quan- 
tities in any neighborhood that I ever saw. Cheap 
hand-bills or posters printed at the nearest print- 



ing office, which could, in most cases, be paid for 
in berries, would acquaint the people with your 
wares. Doubtless an "ad" could, on same terms, 
be placed in some paper circulating largely in your 
vicinity. 

Custom once obtained, see that it is kept by treat- 
ment both courteous and square. Never sell ber- 
ries till they are not only red, but ripe, no matter 
how urgent may be the demand for them at the 
beginning of the season. 

Follow the direction given in the chapter on 
Garden and Field Culture, to have the berries clean 
and perfectly free from grit. Pick them carefully 
and pack them honestly. Let the cups be topped 
off handsomely and attractively as possible, but 
have nothing underneath but clean, sound, ripe^ 
toothsome fruit. 

A good many might be sold by getting the vil- 
lage merchant with whom you deal to display them 
at his store. But a far more effective way to rig 
up some inexpensive conveyance and send them 
from door to door. Berries can be thus sold and 
orders taken for delivery the next day or when 
needed. A live, active boy is invaluable for work 
like this. Indeed, I find that a boy will work 
harder and more cheerfully and interestedly to sell 
strawberries than anything else, watermelons not 
excepted. If he has an interest, be it ever so slight 
in the berries, all the better for your pocket. 

The cups or baskets cost little — about one fourth 
of a cent — and where convenience requires may be 
left with the berries and collected at the next visit. 
If it is necessary to throw in the cup to effect a 
sale, do not hesitate to do so. 

A quarter acre patch set in strawberries of good 
varieties can, without any real expense, be made to 
yield at least i,ooo quarts. Stable manure and wood 



84 

ashes will be the only manure essential — full direc- 
tions for this being given in the chapter on Garden 
Culture. A considerable higher average can be 
usually counted on, but even at five cents a quart 
the 1,000 quarts will bring $50. This is at the 
rate of $200 an acre and the estimates as to yield 
and price is surely a very moderate one. The 
whole money outlay of growing and gathering 
would be nothing except cost of cups and crates — 
about 35c. for 32 quarts — and these should last at 
least five seasons. More fragile ones to last one or 
two seasons can be bought for 25 cents. 



CHAPTER XXI, 



PROFITS OF STRiLWBERRY CULTURE. 

It is amusing to read in the light of recent pro- 
gress what the writers of even ten years ago have 
to say as to the requisites for success in strawberry 
growing. The chief requisite given was nearness 
to market. It is also given, as very essential, that 
£S pickers are unreliable and hard to get, a man 
should have a family large enough to pick his crop 
of berries, or rather let his acreage correspond with 
the size of his family. The grower is also warned 
that he had best not venture, unless he can get 
cheap labor and cheap lands. 

This advice has now quite lost its force. Quick 
express transportation, and above all, the perfection 
of refrigerator cars have virtually annihilated space, 
even for a fruit as perishable as the strawberry. 

Strawberries grown in Southern Florida, or Lou- 
siana, are now delivered in New York, Boston, 
Chicago or Montreal, practically as fresh as those 
grown within ten miles of those markets, and at 



85 

reasonable transportation charges, all things con- 
sidered. 

Then strawberry growing has been developed and 
systemized into a regular business as so many other 
things, once insignificant, have been. When, twenty 
years ago, I put three acres in strawberries, it creat- 
ed great concern in the neighborhood. My neigh- 
bors, who were growing half acre and quarter acre 
patches, warned me that I would be sure to lose my 
crop for lack of pickers. I never lost a quart 
from this cause, and I now grow two hundred 
acres. 

The most valuable agricultural or "trucking'^ 
land in this State, is now devoted to the strawbery. 
Town lots, worth $500 an acre, are planted in them, 
with a handsome profit on the investment. 

Again, as a proof that profit does not always de- 
pend on nearness to market, the largest profit 
authentically reported, as ever made on a whole 
acre — $3,000 was made in Bradford county, Florida. 
I know several growers who have shipped their 
berries nearly one thousand miles and netted $600 
an acre. I have, myself, netted $900 on an acre 
and a quarter, on one occasion, and |6oo an acre 
on my whole crop. 

Of course, the above were exceptional cases, 
Yet, they were indications in every instance, show- 
ing what skill and industry can accomplish in 
strawberry growing, when fortune favors. 

Strawberry growers, like men in all other lines 
of business, a few years ago, suffered from the hard 
times or general business depression. Some made 
no money, and nearly, or quite all had their profits 
cut down for the time being. Nor can the enor- 
mous large average profits once obtainable by the 
grower of a few acres, he now realized on the same 
scale, much less on the far larger scale, on which 



86 

growers now operate. But the now prevailing good 
times will make a fair profit as sure in strawberries 
as in any business whatever. Everybody has 
money to spend. The strawberry industry will 
share in the general prosperity. Never was their 
a better showing for alert progressive growers. 

But under fairly favorable conditions — and refrig- 
erator-car service has vastly widened the area in 
which those conditions are to be found — large profit 
is to be made in strawberries. Though, the high 
old-time prices are not to be expected, the demand 
has vastly increased, the commission men are more 
business-like in their methods, and sales are quicker 
and surer, and returns likewise. 

Then the quickness with which this crop can be 
grown and marketed — nine to twelve months on 
the Northern and Middle States, and often less 
than six months in the far South — is greatly in its 
favor, as compared with other fruits. 

Decidedly, the most prosperous fiuit-growers in 
this State are those who grow strawberries exclu- 
sively. In fact, with the possible exception of the 
peach districts of Georgia, the strawberry districts 
of the South are the most progressive and prosper- 
ous of all. Despite the croaking of pessimists, ex- 
perience and close observation assure me that a 
competent man, in that he has larger facilties, has 
larger opportunities for profit in strawberries now 
than formerly. 

Nevertheless, in the future, even more than in 
the past, the intensive grower, the man with the 
small, highly-manured, perfectly-cultured acreage, 
who superintends all, and does as much of his work 
as possible himself, will make the largest crop in 
proportion. He will do this for the reason that he 
will have better berries, better handled and more 
of them to the acre than the man who has to trust 
argely to the muscle and brain of others. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



IRRIGATION. 



Ninety-five per cent, of the strawberry is water. 
With plenty of rain an acre will produce double, 
and often more, berries than it will in even a slight 
drought. The value of water at the right time is 
of the greatest value. 

Irrigation has of late attracted much attention. 
Much has been written on the subject. In regions 
where irrigation is a custom, and where water is a 
commodity to be bought like other things, regular 
rules exist for watering strawberries as for most 
other things. 

There the water is conveyed from the irrigation 
canals by lateral ditches, which divide it up and 
carry it to all parts of the field. On each side of 
these ditches are plots 20 x 60 feet made perfectly 
level. The 20-foot side of the plot abuts on the 
ditch. The plots are divided from each other by 
banks or ridges of earth eight inches high. 

The strawberries are irrigated by turning the 
water from the ditches into these plots. The ob- 
ject of having each one of them perfectly level is 
that the water, when turned in, will spread at an 
even depth over the whole plot and soak in with- 
out rising anywhere high enough to get the berries 
muddy. It is cut off before rising high enough to 
do harm in this way. A dry soil will thus absorb 
a great deal of water — four inches being the usual 
quantity applied at the time in Califorcia. The 
moment the soil dries off sufficiently it is stirred an 
inch or two deep and left very fine to break the 
crust and lessen evaporation. 

Where strawberries are in any region to be water- 
ed from wells or from small and quickly exhausted 



88 

streams, it willbe necessary to collect the water in 
advance in cisterns or reserYoirs. These reservoirs 
can be made of any size by banking up earth in the 
shape of a huge bowl, the inside lined with cement. 

This reservoir, which can be filled by wind-mills 
or my steam or hand pumps, must be so placed that 
the water can be led from a flood-gate to all parts 
of the field. Lateral ditches may be made with 
level plots on each side for the strawberries, and 
the whole process conducted as above described. 

But in all but the most arid regions a much sim- 
pler mode can be, has been, successfully put in 
practice. 

Select for berries a piece of land so sloping, and 
run off the rows so that there will be a very slight 
but gradual fall from the higher to the lower end. 
A little ingenuity can run the rows in almost any 
field with that result. If they bend and wind it 
matters not. 

The plants should be set on low beds or " lists," 
as directed in the chapter on Field Culture. In the 
course of cultivation more or less depression will 
be created between rows set very low, or apparently 
quite on a level. 

Now the water can be led from the reservoir by 
a ditch running transversely along the higher end 
of these rows and with a shovel turned into each 
row or series of several rows at a time. If the fall 
is very slight, say one inch to twenty-five or thirty 
feet, and only a small stream of water is allowed 
to run in each row, it will flow slowly, largely soak- 
ing in as it goes. By the time it reaches the lower 
end the middles will be wet and miry. From the 
middles it will be gradually absorbed by the beds. 
The plants will also soon throw out roots to reach 
the middles, which will, of course, always be wetter 
than the beds. 



89 

A great deal less water will be reqired than by 
the California plan. But it should be applied much 
oftener, say once a week while the drought or even 
dry weather last. 

Through the greater part of the country, even in 
the severest droughts, vast quanities of water still 
flow along the streams, large and small. This can 
be used to irrigate strawberries; both during the 
summer when the plants are growing and in spring 
when the berries are farming and ripening. 

Plant berries along these streams, each row with 
a gradual fall as above described. If possible, con- 
vey the water by a ditch to the head of the rows, 
where it can be turned into them, as instructed. 
But never plant on ground subject to be overflowed 
by freshets in the stream. 

It will not very often be the case that the plants 
can be placed above all danger of overflow and still 
have the water brought to them by gravitation — 
by natural flow. Therefore it will usually be nec- 
essary to raise the water by pumping. A steam 
pump using gasoline as fuel will be found perfectly 
efFecrive for this purpose and not very expensive. 
The steam pump can be provided with wheels and 
moved as needed. The water can be carried by 
means of hose which can, by one man, be moved 
about from row to row ; or a shorter hose can be 
used to carry it to a ditch, in which it can be con- 
veyed to the upper end of the rows. There is 
scarcely any limit to the distance and height water 
may be thus conveyed. 

The plan, while not altogether as effective as the 
more expensive and elaborate California system, is 
perfectly practicable. This steam pump will cost 
about $200 ; the hose in proportion to its length. 
No engineer is needed where gasoline is used as a 
fuel, as it is self-feeding. The cost of fuel will be 



90 

less than one dollar a day. Only two men will be 
needed to control the hose and water flow. Wind- 
mills can in many cases be used in place of steam. 
The wind-mill and pump might be placed on higher 
ground and the water drawn by suction through a 
hose to the pump. 

It will, in regions tinble to spring and summer 
droughts, pay to buy and run the outfit for three 
acres of berries under intensive culture. 

One such pump would, working every day, raise 
enough water to irrigate at least twenty acres by 
the plan heretofore given, or the water thus raised 
can be used according to the California system. 

Garden beds can be watered with a sprinkling- 
pot or by means of a hose from a force-pump at the 
well. Cold well water will do no harm if applied 
while sun is not hot. After sundown is the best 
time. Never sprinkle water over the plants while 
the sun is shining. This of course, does not apply 
where the water is conveyed along the rows as 
above described. In such cases it does not to 
any great extent touch the foliage of the plant. 
Still, were it practicable, night would be the best 
time for all kinds of irrigation. For then the 
water soaks in and does not bake the soil as it 
might in a hot sun. 



CHAPTER XXIII, 



STRAWBERRY PESTS AND THEIR REMEDIES. 

WHITE GRUB. 

Probably the worst enemy that the strawberry 
grower has to contend with is the white grub or 
grub-worm, as it is commonly called. 

This grub is produced from the egg of the May 
beetle — June- bug, as we call it. There are about 



91 

sixty distinct species of this pestiferous beetle 
found in the United States. All are alike in their 
predatory habits, feeding on the roots of grass and 
small plants, among which is unfortunately in- 
cluded the strawberry. 

They usually attack strawberry plants in June 
and July. The leaves of a plant will be seen to 
suddenly wilt. A very slight pull at the plant 
shows that every root has been neatly cut, leaving 
it a mere stub standing in the .ground. The grub 
that has done the mischief will be found in the 
ground nearby. 

I never lost one plant in a hundred from this 
enemy, but I have seen fields very badly damaged 
thereby. But the remedy is easy, or rather the 
prevention. 

Nature prompts the beetle which produce these 
grubs to deposit eggs in untilled soil, where its 
progeny, as it comes on, will find plenty of grass 
roots for food. If strawberries are always set on 
land that has been cultivated for the two previous 
summers, there will rarely or never be enough of 
the white grub to do material harm. Two years 
culture is best as the grub stays that long in the 
ground before being transformed into the beetle. 

It must not be understood that strawberries can- 
not be grown on any soil unless it has been in cul- 
tivation for two years. But such soil is always the 
safest. I rarely have trouble in planting on ordi- 
nary farming land that has had one yearns clean 
culture. Cultivation seems to destroy many grubs 
A great deal of planting is done in Eastern North 
Carolina on freshly cleared woodland, the grub 
rarely infesting woodland, although, owing to the 
excess of undecayed vegetable matter in such soil, 
it is harder to get a stand of plants. 

Sod land, meadows and pastures that have long 



92 

been in grass, are to be especially avoided. In such 
the grub is almost sure to abound. The beetle 
seems to prefer soil trampled and hardened by cat- 
tle to bore and deposit its eggs in, especially as there 
is no lack of grass and herbs. Such soil must have 
two years tillage before being set in strawberries. 
It is then as good, and often, owing to the richness 
in decayed vegetable matter, better than almost any 
other. It is said that land that has stood only one 
year in clover will not be infested with grub. 

When a field of strawberry plants begin to suffer 
from the grub, there is no remedy but to bear it 
with the best grace you can, and resolve to make a 
wiser selection of soil next time. No insecticide 
can reach him far down in the soil. You can wreak 
vengeance on the criminal after the crime, but you 
know not how many plants may have another of 
the same ilk lurking within an inch or two of their 
roots. 

CUT-WORM. 

This is a brown, green spotted worm, about an 
inch long at maturitv, which in spring destroys 
young, tender plants by cutting them off just be- 
low the surface of the ground. It gives little trou- 
ble on soil that has been tilled for two years, or even 
one year. Cow pastures are nearly always badly 
infested with them. 

The cut-worm can be killed by scattering over 
the plowed fields, a week before the plants are set, 
cabbage or turnip leaves, on which is sprinkled 
paris-green. The worm will seek food, eat and die. 
But this is tedious and expensive, and hardly prac- 
ticable on a large scale. 

With the cut-worm evil, as with most others pre- 
ventives are cheap and easy, cure hard and expen- 
sive. If plants are set very early in the spring they 
get too vigorous by the time he appears to suffer 



93 

harm. It is almost entirely newly set, tender 
plants that he harms. 

THE STRAWBERRY WEEVIL. 

This is a minute beetle, the female of which de- 
posits its eggs in the blossom just before it opens 
and cut the stem, so that it may fall and furnish 
food for the larvae when hatched. As this food 
consists of pollen, only the staminate varieties or 
pistillate varieties that are in some degree stami- 
nate, are mostly attacked. This insect also, oc- 
casionally, attacks the blackberry, dewberry, and 
black raspberry. The only harm it does any kind 
of berry is in the destruction of blooms and conse- 
quent lessening the crop of berries. While occasion- 
ally destructive to a field, an inconsiderable part of 
the berry crop of the country is ever lost through 
this weevil. 

THE STRAWBERRY CROWN MINER. 

This is a pinkish insect, about ore-fourth of an 
inch long, which bores into the crown of the plants. 
Though sometimes a great pest, it rarely does much 
harm. 

THE STRAWBERRY LEAF ROLLER. 

This is a small green caterpillar which sometimes 
does harm about blooming time, by rolling up its 
leaves to the great weakening of the plant. 

THE STRAWBERRY BLIGHT. 

This blight gives trouble in some sections, espec- 
ially during dry, unfavorable seasons, when the 
plants are not in their full vigor. Only a few va- 
rieties suffer much from it, while many are entirely 
exempt. 

The above, while not all the pests that harm the 



94 

strawberry, are all that do any considerable harm, 
and all that need be guarded against. 

REMEDIES. 

The only effective remedies for — or rather pre- 
ventives of — white grub and cut-worm have been 
already given. Paris-green spraying is sometims 
used to destroy the leaf roller — care being taken not 
to use it after the berries get much size. But fire, 
the great purifier, is the safest remedy for all, the 
white grub and probably the cut- worm, excepted. 

Mow the infested beds late in the fall and burn 
the leaves where they lie as soon as dry enough. 
Repeat this in June as soon as the crop is gathered. 
If the mowed plants do not burn readily, scatter 
enough straw over them to make them burn. The 
spring mulch can be used for the June burning. 

The pests will thus be destroyed or largely 
checked, and the plants will suffer no harm, unless 
no judgment is used in the burning. My mode of 
burning is to mow the foliage of the plants as 
closely as possible ; allow it to dry a day or two ; 
then loosen up the mulch, if any, with a rake and 
on a breezy day set fire to the field or patch and let 
it burn quickly over. 

It is also good to move infested beds and plant 
on fresh soil 

Spraying with Bordeoux mixture early in the 
spring as growth begins well, again just after fruit- 
ing and again a month later will check rust or 
blight. Fields so infested one season but if kept 
in, better be treated the spring and summer follow- 
ing. That is if the rust or blight becomes harm- 
ful, which will surely be the case. 



95 

CHAPTER XXIY. 



SERVING, PKESERTINO, COOKING, CANNING, ETC. 

HOW TO SERVK. 

Never wash a strawberry. If you are too indo- 
lent to mulch your bed thoroughly to keep grit 
from the fruit, you don't deserve to eat it at all. 
Washing spoils berries as effectually as anything. 
It spoils their looks — converting a thing of beauty 
into mere slops. It spoils their taste — converting 
the finest of racy flavors into worse than insipidity. 
It spoils their healthfulness — converting the most 
wholesome of acids into fermenting sourness. If 
the washing is done and sugar applied some time 
before eating, the crime will be complete. 

Having given the way not to serve the Queen of 
Fruits, I will now give the way to serve it : Cap 
the berries just before they are to be eaten — (the 
new-fangled way of serving them uncapped for the 
guests to cap may do where they are enormously 
large). Pile them lightly in glass bowls and let 
them be handed round with powdered sugar and 
cream for the guests to help themselves and sweeten 
to taste. It is rarely that any two people like the 
same quantity of sugar on fruit, while the straw- 
berry, if sweetened and kept, deteriorates rapidly 
in the estimation of people who really appreciate it. 

HOW TO PRESERVE. 

One pound of capped strawberries to one pound 
of sugar. Put in preserving kettle over slow fire 
till the sugar melts. Then boil fast for twenty or 
twenty-five minutes. Take out the fruit with a 
perforated skimmer and fill a number of glasses or 
small cans three- fourths full. Boil arid skim the 
syrup five minutes longer; then use it to fill the 



96 

glasses or cans ; seal up while hot and keep in a 
cool, dark place. Being an exceedingly delicate 
preserve, more pains is sometimes necessary to pre- 
vent moulding on top. Some careful housewives 
pour a thin layer of melted suet over the preserves 
after they get cool in the glasses or cans. The suet 
can easily be removed in a cake before the preserves 
are used. However, paper pasted over them, and 
brandied or greased to exclude the air, nearly al- 
ways answers quite as well. For preserving, the 
berries remain whole better if not too ripe. 

HOW TO MAKE STRAWBERRY JAM. 

Mash the fruit with equal weight of sugar and 
cook till thick and done. One pint red cuirant 
juice to four pounds strawberries, while not essen- 
tial, improves the jam greatly. 

STRAWBERRY JEI.I.Y. 

Mash the fruit and squeeze through a bag. To 
every pint of juice add three-quarters of a pound 
of sugar and boil briskly twenty minutes or till it 
"jells." 

Jelly is easier than preserves to keep. 

STRAWBERRY WINE. 

Three quarts of strawberries mashed and strained 
will yield about one quart of juice. To this add 
one pound of sugar. Mix thoroughly and place to 
ferment in clean cask with bung open. As soon as 
fermentation ceases cork up closely or, better still, 
draw ofiF in bottles and cork tightly. Some add 
equal parts of water to the juice, but it is better 
without. 

STRAWBERRY CORDIAI.. 

Stew ripe strawberries twenty minutes and strain 
through a linen bag. To each quart of juice add 



97 

one pound of sugar and ore pint of good brandy. 
Let it stand two weeks and filter through coarse 
muslin, or, better still, filtering paper, and then 
bottle. It is excellent. 

STBAWBERRY VINEGAR. 

To a quart of fresh strawberries add a quart of 
pure apple vinegar ; let it set for a day and night. 
Strain and add every morning a quart of fresh ber- 
ries to the juice, till in all three quarts have been 
added. Then to every pint of juice add one pound 
of sugar. Bottle and cork tightly. With ice this 
makes quite a popular summer beverage. 

STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE. 

Rub a large spoonful of lard and one of butter 
into a quart of sifted flour ; put in a little salt and 
make a dough of cold water. Roll it out into 
cakes about the size of a breakfast plate ; put on 
one of these a layer of strawberries and sprinkle 
with sugar to the taste ; then another cake, a layer 
of strawberries and sugar, and so on till sufficient 
thickness has been reached, topping off with one of 
the cakes. Bake slowly and serve with sugar and 
butter sauce. 

ANOTHER STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE. 

Bake the above cakes a little thicker, tear open 
and spread with fresh, ripe strawberries, sweetened 
and mixed with cream, It is then ready for the 
table. 

STRAWBERRY SHERBET. 

To two quarts of ripe, fresh strawberries well 
crushed, and one quart of water and tablespoonful 
of gelatine and the juice of one lemon. Let stand 
one hour. Strain through cloth, squeezing it hard, 
over one and a quarter pounds of sugar. Stir till 



98 

sugar dissolves. Strain again and freeze in ice- 
cream freezer. 

CANNING STRAWBERRIES. 

For canning and preserving it is better not to 
have strawberries too ripe. They remain whole 
better if not too ripe. For all the other above re- 
ceipts, except preserving, they must be thoroughly 
ripe. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



GOOSEBEERY CULTURE. 

The gooseberry is fast growing into favor, not 
only for pies and tarts in the green state, but is a 
dessert fruit when ripe. In both forms it is very 
wholesome and palatable. It affords an agreeable 
variety in the succession of fruits, and is so pro- 
lific that a few plants, occupying a small space of 
ground, will afiford a plentiful supply for many 
years. 

The gooseberry thrives best in the shade. It is 
successfully grown between the trees in orchards. 

Like the currant, when planted in the garden, it 
should be placed in the coolest, shadiest part. To 
the north or east of buildings or fences is a good 
place. A grapevine trellise to the west of the 
gooseberry plants give them much relief from the 
hot evening sun. Still, they are often grown in 
the open, without any protection. 

A moist soil suits it best. During droughts the 
soil, as for all crops, should have frequent shallow 
stirring. The effect of this stirring in preventing 
evaporation and keeping the soil moist is astonish- 
ingly great. 

The gooseberry requires a rich soil. Ashes lib- 



99 

erally hoed in for two feet around the plants are 
good. In fact, the system of manuring recom- 
mended for the strawberry will suit the gooseberry. 
The plants should not be set closer together than 
four feet. Plant in late fall, winter or early spring. 
The great enemy of the gooseberry is mildew. 
This can be successfully checked by spraying, 
at intervals as needed, with sulphur water — half an 
ounce of liver of sulphur (a compound of sulphur 
and potash, to be had from druggists) — to a gallon 
of water. Mix well and keep mixed by constant 
stirring. A spray pump affords a perfect means of 
applying all such insecticides, fungicides, etc. 
But comparatively few gardoers own spray pumps. 
Syringes are made to be used where a little spraying 
is needed and are much cheaper than pumps. Re- 
member that the object is to apply the liquid as 
near like a spray as possible, but never too heavy^ 
as the liquid then runs o£E. 



DEWBERRY CULTURE. 

The dewberry is by long odds the surest and most 
prolific bearer and the freest from rust of the black- 
berry family. It thrives on a greater diversity of 
soil than any other. It is also earlier and more pro- 
fitable in all ways. The medicinal value of dew- 
berry wine and dewberry cordial has long been re- 
cognized. As a fruit it is exceedingly wholesome 
and can be freely eaten by old and young. 

The plants should be set about four inches deep 
and four feet apart each way. In field culture it is 
customary to set them somewhat further apart each 
way for greater convenience in plowing. The rule 
in field culture is to run off the land four or five 
feet apart, then cross these at right angles by rows 
the same distance apart and set the plants where 



L.ofC. 



100 

the furrows cross. This is called checking. This 
plan admits of plow cultivation both ways and leaves 
only a small square around each plant to be culti- 
vated with the hoe. A small tooth cultivator is 
the proper plow to use. Cultivation should con- 
tinue as late as weeds and grass grow. 

The same manuring recommended for the straw- 
berry should be given the dewberry. As the plant 
is a running one it should be tied up every spring 
to a stake. This keeps the berries clean and also 
facilitates ripening. The stakes, if of some durable 
wood, lasts for years. The same plants continue to 
bear well for ten years or more. 

The old canes die as soon as they finish bearing 
and should be cut out and burnt before the next 
bearing time, the sooner the better. The new canes 
which grow out early in the summer mature and 
bear the crop the ensuring spring. 

The mode of propagation is from the tips of the 
canes. These can be pressed down in the newly 
plowed soil about September ist. They soon take 
root. When dug the following fall to plant about 
eight inches of the cane tip should be cut ofE with 
the new plant. 

Dewberry plants can be set any time from Octo- 
ber 15th to April 15th. Late fall and winter at the 
South and late fall or very early spring at the 
North, is the best time. We plant in November, 
December, January, February and March. 

While the dewberry is usually tied up to stakes 
driven in the ground for the purpose, some success 
has been obtained in letting them run on the ground 
and mulching them like the strawberry. When 
this mode is followed they should be kept cut back 
to not over two feet in length. My experience is 
that if thus grown they are later in ripening than if 
tied up to stakes. 



101 
RASPBERRY CULTURE. 

Both the black and red raspberry should be 
planted about the same distance apart as that rec- 
ommended for the dewberry. That is, when largely 
planted. In garden culture they can all be planted 
along the borders of walks, next to fences, and in 
many spare corners not otherwise utilized. When 
thus planted they should be set four feet apart. 
This may at first appear a waste of ground, but as 
the raspberry plants last for many years, increas- 
ing its number, of course, every year, closer setting 
would soon result in crowding. 

The same manuring recommended for the straw- 
berry, and in the same quantities, and at same 
period, should be applied to the raspberry, dewberry 
and blackberry. Red raspberry plants are propa- 
gated by suckers spiinging up around the parent 
plant, like the blackberry. The black raspberry, 
or black cap as it is called, is propagated like the 
dewberry, by thrusting the tips of the vines down 
in the loose soil. As soon as the old canes bear 
they should be cut out and burned, leaving the 
young canes to bear the succeeding year. 

When the young canes are eighteen inches to two 
feet high the tips should be pinched off. Snap off 
about two inches of the ends. This makes them 
stocky. 

In field culture the raspberry is never tied up to 
stakes, as is necessary with the dewberry. In gar- 
den culture the vines look better tied to light 
trellises, but it is by no means necessary. 

The raspberry thrives on almost any soil, but 
does best on such soil as is recommended for the 
stawberry. It is a mistake to suppose that the 
raspberry thrives only on wet soil. If there is any 
difference they need a slightly dryer soil than the: 
strawberry. 



102 

Black raspberry culture has of late years had a 
serious set-back in anthracnose, a disease which 
kills many canes of that summer's growth and cuts 
off most of the crop the following spring. Re- 
peated spraying with Bordeaux mixture, formula 
for which is given at the end of this manual, is rec- 
ommended for anthracnose. The following plan is 
simple, and as far as tried seems to be effective: 
Cut off and burn the first crop of young canes 
about the middle of June. A second crop of canes 
will at once shoot out, and the second crop seems 
to be less liable to disease than the first crop. The 
same remedy seems effective when the dewberry 
runner is attacked by any enemy or disease. But 
the cttting off must not be delayed till too late. It 
should be done as early as the canes or runners get 
a fairly good growth, so as to leave full time for 
others to grow out and manure. 

Invalids who can touch no other fruit whatever 
eat the raspberry, not only with inpunity, but with 
absolute benefit. Of all dessert fruit it is the 
daintiest and most delicate and the most delicious. 



GRAPE CULTURE. 

The grape seems to have been the very first fruit, 
a not the very first plant of any kind, cultivated by 
man. Far back before history began the rude 
stone monuments and inscriptions show that man 
tended and valued the vine. And to this day he 
has found no more delicious or more wholesome 
thing than the clustered fruit it bears. In litera- 
ture and in art the vine and the grape holds the 
primacy of all fruits and form of growth. Chiseled 
in stone they adorn in fadeless beauty the architec- 
tural glories of forgotten civilizations, and their 
praise extends a golden thread back through prose 
and poetry from the very beginning. 



103 

This preference alone vindicates the taste of 
primitive man, proving him to have had in the 
main a true conception of the beautiful. For the 
vine ladened or unladened with fruit is the most 
graceful and beautiful of nature's productions. It 
is well worth growing for its beauty alone, as it is 
for its fruit alone. 

For field culture the vines should be set in checks 
six feet apart both ways and trained up to stakes. 
For garden culture they should be trained on trel- 
lises. The trellises are easily made by planting 
posts six or eight feet apart and nailing to them 
slats or wire for the vines to be stretched on. Or 
the vines can be planted on each side of the garden 
walk and a slat and wire frame so constructed as to 
form an arch over the walk. This with the vines 
trained on it and the grape clusters hanging down 
underneath forms the most beautiful ornament that 
a garden can possibly have. 

It is always the new wood that grows out each 
spring that produces the fruit. The most success- 
ful growers of grapes prune severely, cutting back 
each branch so as to leave one or two buds on it. 
On good soil these one or two buds will make a 
great growth of vines. 

When trained on a trellise or an arched frame 
the vines can be allowed to obtain sufficient old 
growth to cover them and after that be closely 
pruned every year. Pruning should be done in 
winter or very early spring. 

The above directions apply to the bunch grape. 
Grapes of the scuppernoug type are not pruned at 
all, but allowed to spread at will. For these an ar- 
bor is made by planting post of cedar, sassafras or 
some durable wood and constructing thereon of 
some durable wood a frame work on which the 
branches can spread and be upheld by. All the 



104 

wood used in this arbor should be of the most du- 
rable kind obtainable, because a scuppernong vine 
lasts not for years but for generations. The vine 
on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, from which the 
first English settlers, in the New World ate grapes 
in 1588, is said to be still living and bearing. The 
vine now covers several acres. 

If for any reason it should be found necessary to 
prune a scuppernong vine it must be done late in 
the fall. If done in spring or even in winter it 
bleeds so heavily that great harm might result. 
Even then it is a good plan to char or cauterize with 
fire the stub of the pruned vine branches. 

The scuppernong, like the bunch grape, is not 
only a most delicious fruit, but like it it makes the 
most excellent wines. Scuppernong jelly made from 
who'C grapes, hull and all, is not surpassed by 
another whatever. 

The same manure formula recommended for 
strawberries should be used for grapes. As with 
the strawberry too much ammonia makes vines at 
the expense of fruit. Potash as obtained from 
ashes or sulphate of potash and phosphoric acid from 
acid phosphate, dissolved or ground bone are the 
properties needed. 

The scuppernong grape has no enemy. The 
bunch grape in some sections suiBEers from rot. 
This is easily checked and a fine and never failing 
crop of this most delightful fruit assured by spray- 
ing with bordeax mixture. The formula for pre- 
paring this mixture is given at the end of this man- 
ual. This should be sprayed over the frames and 
vines before growth begins, again when the leaves 
come out and third time just as the giapes form. 
A regular spray pump is best to apply it with. But 
one not wishing to buy a pump for a few garden 
vines, can sprinkle the mixture on with a syringe 
made for the purpose. 



105 

ASPARAGUS. 

A good asparagus bed or plot is an absolute es- 
sential of good housekeeping. This delicious escu- 
lent never fails to bear and to keep bearing. Next 
to rhubarb it comes the earliest of all vegetables. 
It is the easiest and simplest of all to cook. Tie 
the sprouts in a bundle, boil, take up and apply 
butter, salt and pepper to taste. That is all. No 
vegetable could be more wholesome. It not only 
agrees with everybody, but possesses wonderful 
medicinal qualities as an early spring food. It is 
almost a specific for certain kidney trouble. 

The old theory was that an asparagus bed must 
be underlain with masonry to keep the roots from 
getting down into the bowels of the earth. The 
way of making a bed was to dig a trench two feet 
deep, four feet wide and long in proportion to the 
quantity desired. This pit was carefully lined, 
bottom and sides, with masonry and filled with 
rich soil and well rotted manure, thoroughly mix- 
ed. In this the roots were planted about six inches 
deep and a foot apart each way. More manure 
was added annually as a top dressing. 

There is little fault to find with this mode. 
While the masonry did little harm in keeping the 
roots in, it did some good in keeping the moles out. 
But it is tedious and expensive, and not at all nec- 
essary. 

The essentials of asparagus, as of all vegetation, 
and indeed of all organic life, are food and diink 
— manure and water. But it needs more of the 
latter and a great deal more of the former than al- 
most any other plant. The excellence of the 
sprouts depend upon their tenderness and large 
size. Tenderness and size depend upon quickness 
of growth. Very rich soil only can give these 
necessary qualities. Yet such a small plot is re- 



106 

quired to make a large quantity of asparagus that 
one can afford to make it as rich as necessary. 

Asparagus can be successfully grown within a 
bed, or in rows, as other vegetables. The mode 
should depend upon the quantity of ground at com- 
mand. If limited, make a bed. If not, follow 
what is called field culture. 

To make a bed prepare a plot four feet wide and 
as long as required, by spading in deeply a very 
liberal quantity cf manure. The roots or crowns 
should then be set about a foot each way and about 
four inches deep. Deeper planting places the roots 
beyond the reach of the sun heat in early spring 
and makes the crop later. 

A bed once made needs only a heavy top dress- 
ing of stable manure, fresh or rotted every winter, 
and to have weeds and grass kept down at all times. 
Watering liberally will pay well if drought occurs 
in bearing times. The asparagus, like all succu- 
lent vegetables, needs water in plenty, and if nature 
withholds her supply, it should be applied by the 
sprinkling pot if an unfailicg supply of the best 
shoots are desired. 

Asparagus, to be at its very best, needs plenty of 
room. Therefore, the best results are obtained by 
what is called field culture. To follow this mode 
plant in rows two and a half to three feet apart, 
and two feet apart in rows, and set the roots or 
crowns four inches deep. The roots should always 
be spread out in a natural way when planted. The 
soil should be enriched by plowing in plenty of 
manure before the planting. Top dressings can be 
applied annually, as with a bed. Plowing and 
hoeing is tben given as needed, to keep down 
weeds and grass. In a few years, if well manured, 
the crowns attain enormous size and put up a 
prodigious number of large, delicate shoots. 



107 

Cutting can begin the second year after planting. 
A bed, if kept manured and free of grass and weeds, 
will last for many years. There are accounts of 
beds having done well for more than fifty years. A 
field would probably last still longer. 

The sprouts should be cut when about six inches 
high. Cut them o£E several inches beneath the 
surface, but be careful not to go deep enough to 
cut into crown. On a well manured field or bed 
the sprouts spring up like magic and must be 
promptly cut, or they will get old and tough. 
Even if not needed that day cut the sprouts young 
and bury them head and years in a trench, covering 
well with moist earth. They will keep fresh and 
tender this way for a long time. If sprouts should, 
by neglect, be allowed to stand and get too old, 
cut and throw them away and more will come from 
the same crown. 

The crowns continue to put up sprouts for many 
weeks, beginning with early spring and continuing 
till late. When the sprouts are no longer needed 
to cut or sell let them grow up into plants. This 
seems essential to the thriftiness of the crowns. 
Late the next fall cut and remove these old plants 
so as to prevent the seed from falling and setting 
the ground too thickly with plants. 

Salt, to be applied as a top dressing in liberal 
quantities, is widely recommended for asparagus. 
I could never see that it did either good or harm. 
This experience is in accord with that of many 
successful growers that I have addressed on this 
subject. 

Salt is also recommended to prevent the growth 
of weeds, asparagus being almost proof against its 
effects. But it takes a prodigious quantity for this 
purpose, and its effects are not lasting on rich soil. 
Better keep the salt in the salt gourd and kill the 
weeds with a weeding hoe. 



108 

Asparagus roots can be planted at any time from 
September ist to May ist. Late fall, winter or 
early spring is the safest time. 

The Continental Plant Company, Kittrell, N. C, 
furnishes, at a moderate price, well developed roots 
or crowns of the largest, choicest and tenderest 
varieties. 



KHUBARB OR PIE PLANT. 

This is the very first vegetable that the garden 
afEords. The fleshy part of the stalk or leaf stem 
is the edible part. This makes a delicious pie or 
tart. It also makes excellent jelly. It can also be 
strung and dried for winter use. 

The earliness of rhubarb and its sprightly agree- 
able acidity is rapidly increasing its popularity. 
Besides being very wholesome it has a flavor that 
many prefer to that of any other fruit or acid 
whatever. 

It is very easily grown. The soil should be rich 
as for asparagus and kept clear of weeds and grass. 
Plant the roots about two feet apart each way. As 
the leaves grow out in early spring they can be 
broken off next to the parent root or crown and 
their stems or stalks at once utilized for pies, tarts, 
puddings or anything in which an acid fruit can be. 
The leaves grow out very fast and will, on good 
soil, yield a liberal and continuous supply. The 
same roots last for years, and yield their crop every 
spring. Once tried no housewife will be without 
it. Rhubarb roots can be planted in either late fall, 
winter or early spring — at any time during the cold 
months that the ground can be prepared. 

Do not gather the stalks till the plant is old 
enough to have grown stout. Never allow it to go 
to seed. 

lyike asparagus, the same roots -will last for many 



109 



years if not allowed to seed and if weeds are kept 
from choking them. Even poor soil will make 
fair rhubarb, though it is much better when grown 
in rich soil. 



CURRANT CULTURE. 

The currant has only to be known to be appre- 
ciated as a dessert fruit Its acidity is mild and ex- 
ceedingly wholesome and agreeable, while the ex- 
cellence of currant jelly has long ago passed into a 
proverb. 

The currant, like the gooseberry, likes a partial 
shade, growing well between the trees in orchards. 
Where shade cannot be obtained deep mulching 
with leaves, straw or litter of any kind may be re- 
sorted to to keep the soil moist. 

The entrant should be set on rich soil and about 
four feet apart. The bushes do best when the old 
wood is pruned out annually. Sufficient cultiva- 
tion should be given to keep down weeds and grass. 
Wood ashes and stable manure can be applied as a 
top dressing in late fall, winter or early spring. It 
is always best to give a good hoeing, scatter the 
ashes at the rate of one pound to the square yard 
and then top all with a heavy coating of stable 
manure. Never forget that a great excess of ashes 
are dangerous to plant growth. Ashes and stable 
manure lacking both currants and gooseberries can 
be successfully grown by using the fertilizer recom- 
mended in this manual for strawberries. 

The chief enemy of the currant is the currant 
worm These are easily destroyed by dissolving 
one ounce of hellebore in three gallons of water 
and applying as needed with a spray pump, syringe 
or fine sprinkler. 



110 
HORSERADISH. 

Horseradish is such an excellent condiment ; it 
makes such a fine sauce and adds so greatly to the 
flavor of pickles, etc., that no garden should be 
without it. It, too, is easy to grow as a weed. The 
Continental Plant Company will sell you the roots. 
Plant these about two feet apart and keep clean of 
weeds and grass till it gets a start. After that it 
can do with very little cultivation. Planted one 
fall, winter rr spring it will be ready for use the 
following summer. Dig it up, use the large, cen- 
tral roots for sauce or pickle and plant the small 
side roots for next season. In this way they can 
be grown forever 

The horseradish is the most wholesome of all 
condiments. Many use it who can eat no other 
kind. Then the great advantage of it is that it is 
always ready. It can be dug and used at will at 
any time or season. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



SPRVYIIVG FOR FUNGOUS DISEASES. 

In many parts of the country the grape is subject 
to black rot, the raspberry to anthracnose, the 
gooseberry to mildew, etc. All, or nearly all, these 
diseases can be kept down and prevented from 
doing harm by the careful and timely use of fungi- 
cides, or, as is usually termed spraying, the fungi- 
cides or fungous killers being most effectively 
applied that way. 

BORDEAUX MIXTURE. 

This is the most commonly used of all fungi- 
cides. The following are the proper proportions. 



Ill 



the quantity of each ingredient must, of couse, be 
large or small, in proportion to the quantity of 
spraying to be done. 

Water 50 gallons 

Copper Sulphate (Biuestone) 6 lbs. 

Unslacked lime 4 " 

Place the biuestone in a thin bag and suspend it 
in half the quantity of water to be used. It will 
dissolve without attention if given a little time. 
Make a paste of the lime by slacking it with a very 
small quantity of water, and adding a quart at the 
time till the mixture is smooth and soft. This 
paste should be dissolved in half the total quantity 
of water to be used. Then pour the half of the 
water containing the biuestone and the half in 
which the lime has been dissolved together and you 
have the Bordeaux mixture ready for use. It is 
essential that the mixing be done as above di- 
rected. Otherwise the chemical nature of the mix- 
ture is different and the effectiveness of the fungi- 
cide much impaired. A quart or two of cheap 
molasses will make the mixture stick better. 

Bordeaux mixture should be applied as soon as 
the mixing is complete by means of a spraying ap- 
paratus of a size proportionate to the quantity of 
work of the kind to be done. The only requisite 
is that it ejects the liquid with some force and in 
the form of a spray. This enables the operator 
with proper care to reach every pait of the plant, 
tree or vine to be treated. 

The sprayer most commonly used is the ordinary 
hand pump which fits into a water bucket and is 
held in place with the foot and worked by one 
hand, leaving one hand free to direct the nozzle. 
Nozzles adjustable by a screw so as to throw a fine 
or coarse spray can be bought to fit these pumps. 



112 

Gardners* and growers' with only a very limited 
amount of spraping to do can use a syringe made 
for the purpose. Advertisements of syraying out- 
fits will usually be found in the Strawberrry Spe- 
cialist, 

FOR GRAPES. 

In early spring clean the vineyard well, burn 
all prunnings, dead leaves, trash, etc. The vines 
and stakes or trellisses should be thoroughly sprayed 
just as growth begins, again a fortnight later and 
again just as the fruit begins to form. Should rain 
closely follow any of the applications another and 
extra one should be given as soon as the rain is 
over. 

FOR RASPBERRIES, DEWBERRIES, BLACKBERRIES 
AND GOOSEBERRIES. 

Spray before growth starts with bordeaux mix- 
ture made doubly strong with bluestone. The lime 
can be omitted this time. The chief value of lime 
in this mixture is that it corrects the caustic effects 
of the bluestone when applied to foliage. After 
growth starts spray with the regular bordeaux mix- 
ture and again after fruit sets. If the anthracnose 
is bad several sprayings during the summer will do 
good. 

AMMONICAI. SOLUTION. 

One advantage of ammonical solution is that it 
is colorless and cannot stain the fruit even when 
applied late after it forms. Another advantage is 
that it can be prepared as a strong solution, kept 
and corked in a bottle or jug and diluted as needed 
for use. Bordeaux mixture can not be thus kept. 

Fermula : 

Water 45 gallons. 

Strong aqua ammonia 3 pints. 

Copper carbonate 5 ounces. 



113 



Make the copper carbonate into a thin paste by 
adding a pint and a half of water. Add the ammo- 
nia slowly. Cork tightly till needed for use. Then 
dilute in proportion as above given. 



CHAPTEK XXVII. 



THE COW PEA AS A FORERUNNER OF THE STRAW- 
BERRY AND GENERAL SOIL IMPROVER. 

The value of the cow pea in preparing land for 
strawberries is so great that I need make no apology 
for devoting a chapter to it in this manual. ^ Where 
the cow pea thrives, and the different varieties of 
it thrive over for the greater part of the United 
States, it restores worn-out lands faster and more 
economically than can be done in any other way. 

The old method of sowing the peas broadcast, 
two bushels to the acre, is not the best way and is 
being largely abolished. It is better to sow in 
drills so that the peas can be cultivated. This in- 
creases the yield of both peas and vines, besides 
making the crop much earlier and less apt to suffer 
from drought. As only one bushel of peas is 
needed to sow an acre in the drill, the saying in 
seed will amply pay for the simple cultivation 
needed. 

The peas should not be planted till warm weather 
may be counted on to set in. Cool weather, and 
especially cold nights, even without frost, work 
against it while young and tender, though in fall 
when the vines are stout and vigorous it will con- 
tinue to grow under much less favorable conditions. 
We prefer to plant here from May 25th to June 
15th, though very successful plantings are often 
made as late as July 15th. 



114 

Many years experience has convinced us that the 
following is the best way to grow the crop. Run 
oS rows three feet apart. Sow in these evenly peas 
at the rate of one bushel to the acre. Cover very 
lightly, not over an inch or two deep. The pea is 
hard to come up if covered too deep if rain should 
closely follow planting and pack the soil and the 
sun bake a crust on it. This is especially the case 
on stiff land and more or less on all. We cover 
the seed by means of a small tooth horse cultivator 
from which all the teeth have been removed but 
one outer tooth on each side. By straddling the 
row these outer teeth tumble just enough earth 
into the open furrow in which the peas have been 
sown to cover them an inch or two deep. A turn- 
ing plow will cover them fully four inches deep. 

After this two plowings with the cultivator will 
be the only cultivation absolutely needed. The 
first plowing should be given as soon as grass 
begins to sprout and the second one as soon as 
another crop appears. A great deal of grass can 
be suffered to grow without much detriment to the 
peas, but it is cheaper to kill it now with the pea 
vines to overshadow and help you on the job, than 
to let it seed and have to fight it among the straw- 
berry runners the following summer. 

The crop matures sufficiently to cut in less than 
ninety days. For forage it is best to cut just as 
they begin to form good and a few mature. We 
allow most of the peas to mature and either pick 
them by hand or leave them to be threshed as the 
vines are shredded. 

We cut with a mowing machine two rows at a 
time. The old mode was to allow the vines to sun 
several days and then make in shocks and let them 
remain until dry enough to house. We now prac- 
tice a much better mode if properly carried out. 



115 



We mow the vines, being careful to see before 
beginning that they are wet with neither rain or 
dew. Right behind the mower we run a horse 
rake — raking the vines and stack them at once. 

Our stack poles are about ten feet high, one foot 
of the ten being let into the ground to hold them 
up safely against wind. About one foot above the 
ground we nail cross- wise to the post tv^o strips of 
split wood or two small poles, each about four feet 
long. These poles are to keep the vines from lying 
flatly on the damp ground. About one-third the 
way to the top nail two more strips or small poles 
cross-wise to the stack pole and still* another pair 
strips cross-wise to the pole two-thirds the way up 
to the top. These last two pair strips are to keep 
the vines from settling too closely, and to keep 
them loose and open to ventilation. 

Place the vines around the poles in stacks not 
over four feet in diameter. Do no trampling, of 
course, only let them settle by their own weight. 
Round o£E the tops and cap well with grass or any 
fine hay if to be had, as the pea vine is coarse and 
not able to turn water as well as grass or hay. 

Let the vines remain in the stacks till the stalks 
will break on a dry day. They will then do to 
thresh, shred, or to house if threshing is not in- 
tended. 

How long it will take them to dry out depends 
upon the weather. Two or three weeks usually 
sufi&ces. They should not be allowed to stay out 
too long. Owing to the nature of the pea vine the 
stacks are more pervious to rain than any kinds of 
hay. While if properly cured and properly housed 
and shredded they are pound for pound worth 
twice as much as the best timothy hay. The 
chemists may not say so, but the horse, mule and 
cattle generally that eat them say in the limb and 



116 

in the work they can do or the milk and butter 
they produce respectively, say so. 

Occasionally there is a fall like this (1902) so 
wet that it is exceedingly difficult to cure pea vines 
by any mode. Still we found our mode the most 
satisfactory. The vines are also much sweeter 
when cured as we do in the stack than to let them 
lay exposed to the sun, dew and probably rain till 
partially cured and then shrink, being limp they 
settle much closer and remain less pervious to the 
air than if stacked as soon as cut. 



THINGS THAT SHOULD BE BORNE IN MIND BY BERRY 
GROWERS. 

Good plants are half the battle. A well rooted, 
stocky, thrifty plant has every advantage over a 
puny, stunted one. It is not only larger at the start 
but it grows a great deal faster in proportion than 
the small plant. It has all the chances in its favor. 
It is easier and surer to live when first planted. 
Being vigorous and well rooted it stands drought or 
any adverse conditions better, just as the strong 
man stands hardship and exposure better than the 
weak man. When fruiting time comes around it is 
as sure to be better able, and apt to be many times 
as able, to bear a fine crop of fruit than the chance- 
grown scrub plant is. Therefore the wise man 
will plant only thoroughly reliable plants. Better 
good plants at any price than bad or indifferent 
ones as a gift. Penny wise pound foolish applies as 
strongly here as anywhere that I know of. 

Plant the varieties suited to your needs. No end 
of disappointment comes from planting varieties 
which are not suited to your soil or climate. Buy 
your plants from a reliable man who describes the 



117 

varieties as they are and who can be depended on 
to send you not only good plants but plants pure 
and true to name. Deal with no other. 

Don't smother your plants with attention at first 
and then allow weeds and grass to smother them 
a little later on. All the cultivation needed is 
enough to kill weeds and grass at first as they come 
and to prevent a crust from forming on the ground 
in summer. 

Don't apply any kind of manure too heavily at 
one time ; might almost as well dump a week's 
rations to your horse or cow at one time. Apply 
some manure when you plant ; some the following 
fall and some early the next spring. However large 
quantities of manure can be applied before planting 
provided it is evenly broad-casted and thoroughly 
mixed with the soil. Then any excess of manure 
can hardly come in immediate contact with the 
plant roots. 



J. B. SMITH. P. W. HOLDEN. 

SMITH & HOLDEN, 

Commission Mercliants, 

3U Washington Street, NEW YORK. 



Fruits, Produce. 



r^^ 



SOUXHERN BERRIES 



A SPECIALTY. 



REFERENCES— Irving National Bank, New York City ; Dun's and 
Bradstreet's ; Continental Plant Co., Kittrell, N. C; S. M, Blacknall, Kit- 
trell, N. C; Editor Strawberry Specialist, Kittrell, N. C; Bank of Wayne, 
Goldsboro, N. C. 



Daily Returns Always Made. Shipping No. 1 13. 



Southside Manufacturing Co., 

PETERSBURG, VA. 

MAKERS OF CARRIERS 

FOR 

Strawberries, Peaches, Grapes, 
Tomatoes, Lettuce, Hucks, 
ALSO Cantaloupes, Mushrooms, &c. 

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CONTINENTAL 



W. BLACKNALL. 

President and General Manager. 



PLANT CO., 

KiTTRBLL, N. C. 



